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Grain of Madness 


A ROMANCE 


x/ 


BY 


LIDA A. CHURCHILL 


w 

AUTHOR OF 

The Magic Seven,” etc. 




He who is not born with a grain of madness in his composition 
is disinherited by heaven. He will be neither poetic nor artistic, 
nor victorious, nor amorous, nor young. 

Arsene Houssaye, 


• • 


THE 


ISbbey 



I London 


PUBLISHERS 

114 

FIFTH AVENUE 
NEW YORK 


Montreal 




THE I.IBRARY OF 
COHG. FiESS, 

Tvk'O 

NOV. 10 1902 

Copyright Entry 

jo 

CLASS CX.XXc. No 
COPY B. 


Copyrighted 1902 
by 

Lida A. Churchill 


• • 


«»«r • 

• • • • 

• ••»■> • 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Shooting Stars y 

II. A Parting of Ways 19 

III. Fool, or Philosopher? 25 

IV. The Tragedy of Silence 32 

V. A Foregone Conclusion 38 

VI. The Long Bow 43 

VII. Enchantment 50 

VIII. The Woman that Remained 57 

IX. Honeysuckle and Rue 65 

X. Shadows of Heaviness 72 

XL In Pallid Land 78 

XII. Revelations and Resolves.. 85 

XHI The Ebbing Tide 93 

XIV. More Stately Mansions lOi 

XV. Life’s Resetting iii 

XVI. The Stress of New Conditions 120 

XVII. Consequences 132 

XVIII. Master Touches 139 

XIX. Crossing the Bar 144 

XX: Declined Favors 152 

XXL The Only Way i6l 

XXIL Nameless 172 

XXHI. Leolin 184 

XXIV. Fair Fields 1 94 

XXV. Pitchers Cracked and Renewed 201 

XXVI. Pictures and Pauses 207 

XXVII. Days of Disaster 215 

XXVIII. Fine Issues 223 


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TO 

THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN ME, 

AND 

BY THEIR BELIEF HAVE 
IN SO LARGE A MEASURE MADE IT POSSIBLE, 
THIS BOOK 
IS 

DEDICATED WITH GRATEFUL LOVE, 

BY 


THE AUTHOR. 



A GRAIN OF MADNESS, 


I. 

SHOOTING STARS. 

How the world is made for each of us! 

How all we perceive and know in it 
Tends to some moment’s product thus, 

When a soul declare itself — to-wit 
By its fruit, the thing it does. 

— Browning. 

‘‘How many women are in the world, Father 
Alpheus T' 

‘Two; two women,’’ answered the priest absently, 
as he shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out to 
where the White Heron, a mere speck in the distance, 
was dipping her bows rather deeply in the high run- 
ning waves. 

“Two!” exclaimed the boy. “Why, I know more 
than two. There’s Hetty, and Phyllis, and Jetsam — 
though Jetsam’s only a play-woman yet — and Miss 
Trescott ” 

“Peace, boy,” said Father Alpheus, lowering his 
hand. “Did I say two? How should I know how 
many women are in the world ? You are a strange lad, 
and your questions are strange.” 


8 


A Grain of Madness. 


‘'Two. He spoke like an inamorito with a pair of 
sweethearts/’ said Vancourt, one hand holding his 
hat, the other thrust into the pocket of his gray woolen 
trousers. 

“Mr. Vancourt, what is an inamorito?” asked Flot- 
sam, looking up into the face of the artist. 

“An inamorito,” replied Vancourt, “is a lunatic who 
thinks he is happy a quarter of the time, and knows 
he is miserable the other three-quarters.” 

“Then why is one ever that kind of a thing at all ?” 
gravely queried the lad. 

“Ah, that’s a question I have never been able to 
answer,” was Vancourt’s reply. 

But Flotsam seemed to have lost interest in the sub- 
ject and remarked, as he still gazed into the face of 
the artist : 

“My grandpa and I are reading something called 
evolution; how folks sprang from the lower animals, 
and, do you know, I think you were a lion one time? 
You look ever so much like one, and your voice is big, 
and heavy, and growly.” 

Vancourt laughed in a way that certainly might 
have suggested a roar, and said : 

/'You reading evolution! Such stuff! You should 
have Mother Goose and the Arabian Nights for liter- 
ary food. What is Herr Lessing thinking of, I 
wonder ?” 

“O, of so many things !” said the boy. “And I like 
to talk with him of most of them, but I like best to 
hear him read about the gods and the fairies and 


Shooting Stars. 9 

nymphs. The world must have been so interesting 
once.'’ 

But now the White Heron was nearing the tiny 
wharf, and Vancourt did not answer. 

The boat was brought close to the landing, and 
Father Alpheus and the boy stood by while the artist 
assisted Miss Trescott to alight. 

The young woman went straight to the priest and 
greeted him warmly. 

''You are kind to come so often to meet me," she 
said. 

"I thought the storm of last night might prevent 
your putting off," said Father Alpheus. "I knew there 
would be a heavy sea this morning. If you did make 
an attempt to come I wished to see you safely on 
shore." 

"So good of you," said Miss Trescott. "And you. 
Flotsam. I wonder if the grotto will be too cool for 
your thin dress now that the air has been made so 
much keener by the storm." 

"Ah, no," replied the lad. "It has been so warm, 
you know, even in the shade. I shall be sure to like 
the coolness." 

Father Alpheus said good morning and turned 
away, and his three companions set out for the woods. 

It would be hard to select four people more dissimi- 
lar in appearance than those who met on the sands 
that summer morning. 

Father Alpheus, priest in three straggling hamlets 
which adjoined each other, tall and ascetic looking, 
with piercing hazel eyes, and hair of that drab hue 


lO 


A Grain of Madness. 


produced by the union of black and gray, his manner 
nervously grave, his look intent, his mouth thin-lipped 
and sensitive. His voice was low and vibrant, and one 
accustomed to analyze voices would have detected in it 
a passionate note. Perhaps no single word would 
have so accurately described this man and his manner 
as the adjective intense. 

Looking at Allan Vancourt one could but acknowl- 
edge the truth of the statement that he resembled a 
lion. Broad of shoulder, massive of frame, his heavy, 
straggling hair a dusky red, his thick, full beard a 
lighter shade of red, his face broad, his mouth straight- 
lined and firm, his eyes nearer yellow than blue; the 
whole massive countenance being capable of hardening 
into a cold sternness, or breaking into a slow, spreading 
smile. The lad had not erred in pronouncing his voice 
big and heavy and growly. 

An English artist hiding from his honors was Allan 
Vancourt. He had produced several pictures which 
were pronounced masterpieces. All London united in 
declaring that this young man would add one more 
name to the long list of England’s geniuses, and the 
proudest and most exclusive flung open their doors 
and bade him enter. But having no affinity with the 
things of society, he one day tossed the numerous cards 
of invitation which lay on his table — many of them un- 
read — into the waste basket, packed a few articles and 
his painting materials, and took passage on the next 
American-bound steamer. After landing he wandered 
about until on the coast of New England he found a 
little hidden village, ocean-washed on one side, on the 


II 


Shooting Stars. 

other stretching away into a lovely desolation of for- 
ests and glens — a place of flashing brooks and wood- 
land retreats where the trees met overhead, and the 
squirrels and birds were too unaccustomed to man to 
fear him. 

''Surely one may reasonably hope to be left alone 
here,’' ruminated the artist, and forthwith engaged 
board at a farmhouse on the outskirts of the little vil- 
lage. Day after day he sketched and painted, or sat 
for hours upon the grass or some fallen tree, smoking, 
dreaming and thanking his stars that his lines had 
fallen in pleasant places. 

There was one person, however, who was welcomed 
by Vancourt during his ramblings or restings. 

One day after a heavy storm he had wandered down 
to the shore. Just as a huge wave had broken on the 
sand, there started up at his feet, as though washed 
ashore by the plunging breaker, a boy and a girl. 
Vancourt’s surprised eyes rested on the two, and his 
artist judgment could not but be favorable unto them. 

From one of the most beautiful faces ever bestowed 
by the gods upon a favorite, the boy pushed back a 
mass of silky brown curls which the breeze had blown 
wildly about, and looked at the stranger with eyes of 
the loveliest blue. His forehead and throat, as well 
as the feet and ankles, which showed so fair against 
the wet sand, were white as pure ivory. His form was 
slim and erect, and shapely as a chiseled thing. He 
wore short blue trousers, fastened at the knee, and a 
loose tunic of the same texture and color. 

The girl, though far less beautiful, was still attrac- 


12 


A Grain of Madness. 


tive, with her olive skin, black hair, and dusky, brood- 
ing eyes. Her bare brown limbs were somewhat less 
graceful than were the lad's, and her gaze less open 
than his. 

She wore the same blue cloth fashioned into a short 
skirt, and a sort of blouse. 

The two were drenched and a little frightened. 
They had raced in before the high wave, but not fast 
enough to prevent their being generously splashed by 
it. 

''Will you specimens of human driftwood explain 
from what shore you were washed into the sea?” 
asked Vancourt. 

"It was swifter than we thought,” said the boy with 
a little shiver, glancing at the water, without answer- 
ing Vancourt. 

"Have you sea children names?” was the artist's 
next inquiry. 

"Ah, yes,” said the boy. "Mine is Franqois 
Ernest ” 

Vancourt interrupted by a wave of the hand. 

"Don’t tell me. I am not good at remembering 
names. You will be simply Flotsam and Jetsam to 
me if we meet again, as I hope we shall, for I like 
you well.” 

"But we were not washed in by the sea,” said the 
girl soberly. "We live with Herr Lessing, in the cot- 
tage yonder. He is our grandfather. He says that 
my brother is French, like our father, but that I am 
German, as our mother was, though somehow we 
have changed complexions. The brother knows much. 


Shooting Stars. 1 3 

and studies well, but he is light of heart and of tongue, 
grandpa says, and his fancies make havoc with facts/’ 

The artist met the children several times, and be- 
tween him and the lad there grew up a close intimacy ; 
an intimacy which the sister did not share, being more 
than half afraid of Vancourt. At almost any hour of 
the day when the boy’s study hours were over, or had 
not begun, the curiously contrasted pair might be 
seen together. 

A kind of intimacy had also sprung up between 
Father Alpheus and the artist. The former had been 
kind to Vancourt in the way which a resident member 
of a place may be to a transient sojourner, sometimes 
lending him books, directing him to places where good 
sketches could be obtained, and occasionally inviting 
him to a meal at his house. 

It was not a pleasant communication nor a welcome 
request that the priest made to him one evening after 
the two had taken tea together. Father Alpheus ex- 
plained that he had arranged for the daughter of an 
old and valued friend to board on the island two miles 
away, with some parishioners of his, and to come over 
to the mainland to sketch. Would it be asking too 
much of Vancourt, who knew all the latest methods in 
painting, that he would give Miss Trescott an occa- 
sional word of advice concerning her work ? She 
possessed a strong artistic temperament, but had, with 
the exception of the last year, when she had been 
studying in New York, lived in the West, away from 
artists and works of art. She would not intrude upon 
him. She was wholly devoted to, absorbed in, her art. 

Vancourt resisted the temptation to say that he never 


A Grain of Madness. 


14 

wished to meet the young woman, and should probably 
not remain long after her advent, and replied courte- 
ously that if, in return for all the kindnesses he had re- 
ceived at the hands of the priest, he could give Miss 
Trescott a word of counsel now and then, he should 
be glad to do so. 

Father Alpheus had introduced the young man and 
woman to each other ten days before the morning meet- 
ing on the sands. 

They had not seen much of each other during those 
ten days. They had sought different places in which 
to sketch, and as yet Vancourt had not been afforded 
an opportunity to speak a word of that counsel which 
the priest had solicited. 

They had come together accidentally two days be- 
fore our introduction of the group, and Miss Trescott, 
who had seen and admired Flotsam, had declared that 
she would like to paint him as Cupid among the ferns 
if she could find the right setting for the picture. Van- 
court knew just the spot for such a sketch, and had 
conducted her and the boy to it. He had assisted in 
placing the model, and had wandered about within 
easy distance while the less experienced artist had 
made her first sketch. On their way back to the vil- 
lage the two had contrived another way in which the 
lad, who delighted to be used as a model, might be 
posed, and on the morning on which we first meet them 
Vancourt and the boy were waiting to accompany Miss 
Trescott to the woods. 

Among a group of ordinary girls Helen Trescott 
would have appeared as a rose among dandelions. 


Shooting Stars. 1 5 

Frank, generous, impulsive, she yet never lost an air 
of aloofness. With a pride too genuine to become 
haughtiness, too really aristocratic to be obliged to as- 
sume exclusiveness, she created for herself a select at- 
mosphere in which only congenial souls could freely 
breathe. Those who understood her knew that her 
inherent fineness would ever be a shield against the 
world's rudeness or humiliations. Coarseness found 
no way of approach to her. One could imagine the fine 
fervor with which she would love or hate, and feel 
that her tenderness would be of a more exquisite flavor 
than that of one whose nature was keyed to more 
neutral tones. Those who pronounced her face, with 
its irregular features and imperfect contour, beautiful, 
seldom knew the reason Tor their verdict, but others, 
wiser in finding causes for their preferences, were 
aware that the swift play and expression, the instan- 
taneous illuminations and changes of the countenance, 
lent it charm. Her hair was yellow, her blue eyes wide 
open and eager, her figure slight with a swaying sort 
of grace, her step springy and light. 

‘Why did I come to New York?" she was saying to 
Vancourt in her finely modulated voice as the trio 
went up the pebbly path and along the upland mead- 
ows. ‘T think it was the shooting stars that de- 
termined my course. You know the superstition that 
if one wishes while a star is falling he will get his 
wish. Perhaps you remember what showers of stars 
fell some year and a half ago? Why, it appeared to 
rain stars. It seemed as though the sky must miss 
them, so many deserted it. Night after night I 


i6 


A Grain of Madness. 


watched them, and repeated over and over my wish; 
the wish that I might be shown where and how to be- 
gin to do with some degree of intelligence the work 
which was set for me. Somehow the meteors all 
seemed to shoot eastward, and just then, as though in 
answer to my wishes — which were really importunate 
prayers — came a New York paper to my mother in 
which a well known artist was spoken of as 
being willing to receive a few pupils. I decided to 
follow the direction of the shooting stars, and to put 
myself under his tuition. 

‘^My mother, with Auntie for companion, and her 
books and flowers, can live in our drowsy western 
home, but I was always like the starling which wanted 
to ‘get out.’ Mother was a little frightened at the 
thought of my going so far away, but I obtained her 
consent to visit New York, and finally to remain there 
and study. And so I have been there for a year, and 
now, by the advice of Father Alpheus, I am here.” 

“There to what purpose? Here to what end?” 
growled Vancourt. “Are you a painter or a dauber, 
I wonder. What did you want? What would you 
sacrifice for Art?” 

He stopped as he ceased speaking, and fixed his eyes 
upon Miss Trescott. Also standing still, and looking 
her questioner in the face, Helen Trescott said : 

“I was obliged to come away. I had to find out 
whether I was a dauber or a painter. The voice which 
called me was as real as that which spoke to Samuel. 
What would I sacrifice for Art? Sometimes I could 
not sacrifice anything, for all I could bring, life, liberty. 


17 


Shooting Stars. 

joy, love, would be a free and grateful offering of 
thanksgiving that she had elected me among her 
votaries. I cannot tell anyone — I never tried before 
— what I feel when this mania is upon me. I do 
not long for fame, for money, for place, but just to 
feel that I have created a picture which shall be to me 
a supreme Utterance. If ever beneath my brush there 
shall appear that of which I can say. This is I ; my 
Life is on the canvas; my Soul has portrayed itself, 
those who will may commend, and those who will may 
withhold their praise; I shall be satisfied.’’ 

Allan Vancourt lifted his hat in his left hand and 
held out his right to Miss Trescott. 

“I understand,” he said. ''You have entered with 
reverent feet the Holy of Holies. Art has elected you 
one of the Inner Circle. You are among the Inspired.” 

Miss Trescott did not take the outstretched hand. 

"Not yet,” she said somewhat sadly. "Having told 
you so much I must tell you more. It is a strange fact” 
— as she spoke she lifted her eyes which had dropped, 
with a half appealing look to his face — "that I go out 
from the Holy of Holies; that I sometimes actually 
recoil from the idea of being an artist. At such times 
I long to do anything rather than to handle a brush. 
I cannot explain this feeling, or tell you how it troubles 
me. Sometimes it seems to me that I am not a horn 
painter, for until I was fourteen I never thought about 
doing anything but a little sketching and occasional 
flower painting. It was Father Alpheus, who stopped 
on his way from Denver to pay my mother a brief 


i8 


A Grain of Madness. 


visit, who first fired my imagination about painting. 
From that time there grew to be two Helen Trescotts; 
Helen Trescott the artist, alone with her soul and her 
work, earnest, aspiring, absorbed, and the woman who 
would fling aside all absorption in anything, all re- 
straint, and be free as air, en rapport with all the gay, 
glad things of the world. But the artist is the woman 
that remains. It is her life I live. You are one of the 
people whom I should not wish to deceive. I could not 
let you think me reverent towards, and worthy of, Art 
all the time.” 

Vancourt again put out his hand. 

‘‘With Helen Trescott, the artist,” he said. “With 
the woman that remains/^ 


A Parting of Ways. 


19 


11 . 

A PARTING OF WAYS. 

Take heed lest passion sway 
Thy judgment to do aught which else free will 
Would not admit. 

— Milton. 

A carnival of color; a reign of crimson and gold. 
Flash upon flash of quivering light, and then a swift 
decline into ashy grayness which becomes a dense, 
angry purple. 

The sun had set. 

Two people had watched its going down with never 
a word. When the purple had complete sway the girl 
turned to her companion, and said, as though resuming 
an interrupted conversation : 

‘'To what profit could this knowledge be bruited 
abroad? For my sake? What could it gain for me? 
Love ? I have it already. Marriage ? Marriage with 
a man who would turn from his nobler instincts, and 
trail his lifelong purpose, a dishonored thing, in the 
dust. And for what? Will men understand? Will 
they seek for motives, allow for temptations, weigh 
principles? Never! They will point to you as one 
who has proved that man’s vows go for little ; that the 
virtue of a priest is inviolate only so long as it is not 


20 


A Grain of Madness. 


combated by desire ; that his robe is a cloak of sin, his 
surplice the garment of a sensualist. 

‘'And as for me? Shall I be honored, or at least 
spoken of as one who for love’s sake forgot all but love, 
but who for constancy’s sake may still be called a pure 
woman? Has the world changed in a few short 
months ? Changed because we have come to be among 
those who might wish to count upon its justice and 
lean upon its mercy ? The answer is too certain. You 
would be the priest who dishonored yourself and your 
order, and added to the dishonor of the whole world; 
withal, one who would put aside his panoply of char- 
acter, his real vocation in life, for that which could 
never satisfy him or the one for whose sake the sacri- 
fice would be chiefly made. Nothing would be ad- 
justed. A wrong would be done. 

“But the constantly lived lie! The eating of the 
bread to my sure damnation, the drinking of the wine 
to my everlasting shame !” 

“And who formed the creed, and fixed the decree 
which would make your priest’s life a lie? God, or 
man? Would it not be a greater lie for you to declare 
by a hampered life and hindered usefulness that you 
were no longer fit for the work whereunto you were 
sent ? It is not God’s law, but man’s rule, which would 
set between you and your heaven-appointed life-work 
a moment of hated passion, an hour of loathed sin. 
You can by a life of toil with the weapons which you 
best know how to use, atone for that which was evil. 
Tell the world of that madness which overtook you 
like a whirlwind, and bore you down as the wind bears 


21 


A Parting of Ways. 

down the tall grain, and man’s hand will wrench from 
you your weapons, man’s decree forbid God’s dictates, 
and you will turn your back on your Maker that you 
may honor the commands of His creature. Broken 
on the wheel of circumstance, wrecked by a decision 
ready-made and forced to fit all cases, but utterly un- 
ad justable to your own, you will make your life a use- 
less thing, disobey the instinct which is the voice of 
heaven, and die as the fool dieth.” 

The man would have spoken, but she silenced him 
with a gesture, and went on : 

'Tf any human will but your own should dictate to 
you, any human decision sway you, mine should be that 
will, that decision. By the most sacred thing vouch- 
safed to woman I have bought your obedience. I have 
given you too abundantly of that which is above price. 
I have paid heavily for the right to be your judge. I 
claim that right. Hear, and understand me. Cast 
aside your priest’s robe to-morrow ; proclaim to all the 
world our sin, and I will still refuse to marry you. I 
will never bear your name ; your child shall never bear 
your name. God will not hold you in disgrace. He 
wipes out the sins of other men as he did those of 
David, who was once a criminal. I bid you be silent. 
Silence is sometimes heaven’s speech. If there is sin 
in this be it upon my soul, for I will have all things 
as I have said.” 

'‘And I,” groaned the man, "on whom the retribu- 
tion should fall, must be free to carry out my desire, 
to walk in my chosen way, leaving you to bear alone 
the pain, the burden, the disgrace which must result 


22 


A Grain of Madness. 


from my act! This you command. How can. I obey 
you ?” 

‘To bear the thing I choose to bear, to walk in my 
elected way. The thing I could not bear would be 
your disgrace, your humiliation. Every taunt against 
you would sting me like a point of flame, every jeer 
hurled after you drive me mad. I can suffer for one ; 
I could not suffer for two if you were one of the two.” 

“Ah, but how surely is God not mocked! The dis- 
grace, the humiliation, the eternal jeer which you re- 
fuse for me from the world must come from within, 
lashing and torturing me forever. No confession to 
man, no absolution; nothing but remorse; if possible 
expiation by penance and good deeds.” 

“Cast no remorseful looks behind you,” cried the 
woman. “Heaven forgives and makes new beginnings. 
It is man who remembers to torture. Work is sacra- 
ment, service religion. You shall know of me and that 
which betides me. I shall write when I am away from 
here ; write under another name. Remember I am not 
sorry that I loved you. I shall always love you. 
Good-bye.” 

It was quite dark. The man put out his hand as 
though he would place it upon her head in priestly 
blessing, and let his last act, at least, be free from pas- 
sion, but the raised hand clenched itself, then the fin- 
gers unclosed, and with a swift, strong movement the 
girl was gathered to his heart, with a burning vehe- 
mence his kisses fell on her lips, her forehead, her eyes, 
her hair, and with a groan she was released. 

With a staggering motion the man went down the 


23 


A Parting of Ways. 

hill, and the woman, pausing a moment as though to 
gather strength, walked rapidly along the path to a 
small house in the valley. 

Sitting alone in the darkness the man knew that he 
had pleaded to bear a thing which he never could have 
borne. He had, nevertheless, been sincere in his plead- 
ing. He had wished to pit his strength of character 
against a world’s strength of scorn; he had meant to 
prove his nobility by acknowledging that which would 
brand him as ignoble ; but now that the striving of the 
spirit of self-sacrifice was removed, now that honor in- 
stead of bidding him speak commanded him to be 
silent, he knew that the fight into which he would have 
entered would have demanded stronger weapons than 
he could have mustered, an endurance which he could 
not bring to it. His whole frame trembled as he 
thought of the finger-pointing of men ; the perspiration 
stood upon his forehead when imagination showed him 
looks of curiosity and the smile which was half a sneer 
on the lips of those who wholly despised him while half 
condoning his weakness. Had pointed bayonets flashed 
in front of him, and the thunder of cannon deafened 
him, he could sooner have faced the one and stood un- 
shrinkingly before the expected balls of the other than 
have moved among those who pitied or thought ill of 
him. He would have attempted the latter course for 
honor’s sake; he would have played his part miserably, 
and he knew it, and the knowledge was a sharp re- 
proach. She could bear so much for him! He could 
bear nothing for her. And yet he would have gone 


24 


A Grain of Madness. 


down to the dust trying for her sake, for love’s sake, 
for honor’s sake. 

This was his consolation. 

His sense of justice was at war with his knowledge 
of his weakness. He bitterly blamed himself for not 
possessing that which had never been given him. 

The dark hours went by. The gray dawn broke and 
found him still on the hillside. He had planned his 
expiation. His feet should be turned in a direction in 
which those of an erring man should go. His silence 
should indeed be heaven’s speech. 

It was a matter of great surprise to the diocese when 
the young aspirant for holy orders whose intellect most 
quickly grasped and readily formulated abstruse sub- 
jects, whose towering ambition had been a source of 
anxiety to his confessors, asked to be sent to the humb- 
lest field which could be given him, to work among 
people too poor to give gifts or to afford aught save 
the barest pittance, where hard work and much care 
might be expected; but the young priest gave no rea- 
son for his' change of mind and choice of work, and his 
devout friends thanked heaven for the evident change 
in a heart which they could not know was well nigh 
breaking, and gave him his way* 


Fool or Philosopher? 


25 


III. 

FOOL, OR PHILOSOPHER ? 

My life is for itself, and not for a spectacle. It is easy 
in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in 
solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who 
in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the 
independence of solitude. 

— Emerson. 

Robert Trescott smiled at the remark, which was 
frequently made, that his little daughter was like him ; 
that the hair of father and child must have been spun 
from the same thread. 

'‘Ay, spun from the same thread likely enough,’’ he 
would answer, "though perhaps not woven by the same 
loom. The right things get together. They cannot 
help it. It is spiritual magnetism. People are not 
obliged to have the same blood in their veins to be re- 
lated. Many who are born of the same parents are 
strangers. My own are those to whom I am divinely 
related ; whom I claim by inevitable laws.” 

No one of his simple-minded neighbors pretended 
to understand the young man who talked in riddles, 
and each one shared the opinion of the village post 
master, who declared that "Mr. Trescott was either 
mighty foolish or mighty deep.” 


26 


A Grain of Madness. 


But it was a pleasant thing, that smile of Robert 
Trescott's, and people liked to call it forth, and the 
resemblance between himself and wee Helen was often 
remarked. The speaker of riddles was glad for the 
words and for the facts which made them possible ; 
glad for the yellow hair which grew alike on the head 
of the child and his own; glad for the blue in both 
his own eyes and hers; glad that people noticed and 
commented upon tricks of manner and peculiarities of 
speech, which, without reasoning of resemblances 
which association may produce, they pronounced like 
his. 

‘'Her father's own child," the frequent observation 
ran. 

“Truly, her father'^s own child," young Trescott 
would agree, while his smile would deepen a little, and 
his voice sink into a low tone as he added : 

“That is ours which we receive as a gift equally 
with that which we create. Her father's own child, 
in very truth." 

The thoughts and beliefs of this tiller of the soil re- 
fused to run in accustomed channels. He seemed one 
of Nature's negative poles. That which people in 
general attracted to themselves, he, for the most part, 
repelled. He set up between himself and many sor- 
rows and annoyances which men make vital unto 
themselves by appropriating them, a reasoning which 
by the few who grasped it at all, was branded as imbe- 
cility or praised as philosophy, according to the under- 
standing or misunderstanding of those who listened 
to it. 


27 


Fool, or Philosopher? 

He changed circumstances by regarding them in 
a new light, crowded out traditional doctrines by 
adopting creeds of his own. That which to his mind 
had never been given to him he refused to acknowd- 
edge as his. He suffered the forging of no connecting 
Imks between himself and any disintegrating or un- 
quieting thing with which he saw no necessity for near 
relations. 

When, with all the eloquence which passionate love 
could inspire, he urged the woman who in a month 
from the time when he first met her became his wife, 
to marry him, he refused in masterful but kindly 
stubbornness to be answered negatively if only vague 
reasons could be given for the refusal. The girl, 
obeying some impulse which she never understood, 
told him a secret which would have sent most men 
from her with the haste of those who flee for a cause 
grave enough to remain undiscussed, but this man 
said with simple conviction : 

‘This does not necessarily touch me. I love you. 
I want you. How could I be worthy of you if I did 
not care enough for you to stay by you all the closer 
because you need me? Another man’s child? Why 
not mine if I make it so? Why need I manufacture 
darts with which to pierce myself? You do not love 
me? I wish it were otherwise, but I prefer spending 
my life trying to teach you to do so than away from 
you. And could I leave you alone to suffer because 
you have no passion for me? That would be loving 
myself and my fancied dignity more than you.” 

The two were married. The date of that marriage 


28 


A Grain of Madness? 


was never known in the far West where the young 
man, who had inherited a considerable fortune from 
his uncle, purchased a farm. 

When the child was born a sister of Mrs. Trescott’s 
was summoned from the East, and continued to live 
in the Trescott home. 

In every community there is a royal family; one to 
which homage is involuntarily paid and unquestion- 
ingly given; one by which such homage is uncon- 
sciously demanded and unsurprisedly received. This 
giving is an unuttered recognition of uncrowned 
royalty, an unconscious tribute to superiority. 

The Trescotts were the royal family in the neighbor- 
hood in which they lived. Gathering about them 
without effort all that was fine, repudiating without 
conscious renunciation all that was coarse, they were 
the center and perfection of refined civilization to 
their less cultivated neighbors. 

Helen remained at home, taught by her mother, but 
possessing from early childhood a keen delight in life 
in all its phases. The city with its myriad activities 
was less a wonder than a delight to her. She was 
often allowed to visit it in company with some member 
of the family, and while she was yet small enough to 
stand on the cushions of the railway carriage and look 
out of the window, she would gaze back at the lights 
of the town which she was leaving with longing re- 
gretfulness and many questions as to when she should 
see them again. 

When she was eleven Robert Trescott died, leaving 
his wife possessed of all his property. On his dying 


Fool, or Philosopher? 29 

bed he made a request, and received two solemn 
promises. 

He spoke of a cousin, Archibald Trescott, the only 
child of the uncle who had made his nephew Robert, 
rather than his son, his heir. 

This son had perhaps not been worse than most 
young men, but the father had been sterner and more 
unyielding than most fathers, and when reproofs and 
threats proved as unavailing as reasonings and ex- 
postulations had done, Archie was forbidden to enter, 
except as a reformed character, his father’s house. 
Possessing the pride if not the morality of his sire, 
the young man disappeared immediately after the edict 
of his conditional banishment, and was seen no more 
in the vicinity of his former home. After seven years’ 
absence his name appeared in the list of those who 
went down on a steamer bound to Liverpool. When 
Robert Trescott, who was a lad, of fourteen when his 
cousin went away, was twenty-one he came into pos- 
session of the estate which Archie would naturally 
have inherited. 

When the dying man had spoken of these things 
to his wife and Helen, who stood by her mother’s side, 
he said : 

‘Whether Archie married I have no means of know- 
ing, but if either of you ever meet one who belonged 
to him I charge you to receive that one as I would have 
received him, to care for him as I would have cared.” 

‘T will receive him as you have received my child. I 
will care for him as you have cared for her.” 

This was the wife’s reply. The maiden with the 


3 ° 


A Grain of Madness. 


awed face and intent eyes who stood beside her mother, 
laid her head on the pillow, where her tresses mingled 
with the locks so like her own, and with all the earnest- 
ness of her young soul promised to do all that one 
might for this unknown, perhaps non-existent person 
for whom Robert Trescott and the dead prodigal might 
have cared. 

‘'May he live again in his child,’’ said one who had 
been fond of young Trescott, and Mrs. Trescott, re- 
membering the generosity which had shielded her, the 
strength which had upheld her, the thoughtfulness 
which had made her its object; remembering, too, 
something which the speaker never knew, repeated fer- 
vently with an unnoticed change of one word. 

“May he live again in the child !” 

The Trescott s saw but little company after the death 
of the farmer. Without discourtesy or want of inter- 
est, Mrs. Trescott had that in her manner which 
forbade intimacy. The first to relieve want or to sym- 
pathize with sorrow, she nevertheless lived in an atmos- 
phere of her own which was exclusive without rude- 
ness, prohibitive without haughtiness. Her manner was 
not so much that of one who would bar others out as 
of one who would shut herself in. Calm and cheer- 
ful, she yet impressed one with a belief of passion held 
in leash; speaking softly and easily, she yet suggested 
the idea of suppressed force ; quietly busy with book or 
needlework or the superintendence of household affairs, 
she yet caused one to wonder how she could be occu- 
pied with these things. As a kind if abstracted wife, a 
gentle if something less than tender mother ; a 


Fool, or Philosopher? 31 

thoughtful if not always companionable sister and 
friend, she was esteemed, revered, referred to, but, after 
her husband's death, left very much alone. 

One day when she had been three years a widow she 
summoned Helen to the drawing-room that she might 
introduce to her an old friend, an Eastern priest who, 
en route from the extreme West, where some impera- 
tive clerical duty had called him, paid a two-hours' 
visit to the farm. 

The child wondered if all priests were as kind as this 
one, who was so interested in her studies, so solicitous 
for her future, so anxious about her tastes and habits. 
She remembered Robert Trescott's words that those 
are ours to whom we are divinely related. Though 
only partially understanding the meaning of the words, 
she vaguely felt their force, and that they were applic- 
able in the case of her mother's friend. 

After the departure of the priest, whose blessing 
seemed so solemn to her, she stole to her mother's side 
with the question: 

'Ts he not divinely related ? Is he not ours ?" 

A strange light was in the mother's eyes as she . 
answered : 

‘^He is indeed related. He is ours/^ 

‘'Our very own?" questioned the child with eager 
persistence. 

The strange look remained on the mother's face as 
she answered : 

“Our own, my daughter, our very own." 


32 


A Grain of Madness, 


IV. 

THE TRAGEDY OF SILENCE. 


Thy prayers are as clouds in a drought ; regardless, unfruitful, 
they roll; 

For this, that thou prayest vain things, ^tis a far cry to 
Heaven, my soul, 

Oh, a far cry to Heaven ! 

— Edith Thomas. 

God ! and this is life ! We strive, with sweat- 
ing brows and aching limbs, for bread that hunger 
may not consume us; we struggle in the water, and 
battle with the storm, and die a hundred mental deaths, 
and dare a thousand spiritual agonies, that breath may 
remain to us; that we may say with lying lips, ‘We 
live.’ Oh, foolish adoration of existence! Oh, short 
sighted love of life! Would not the wise man wel- 
come oblivion as the maid welcomes her lover ? 
Would not he who has understanding hasten by every 
means the falling of the curtain which shuts him in 
with darkness and peace? 

“Oh, crushing weight of atonement ! An hour’s de- 
lirium, the madness of a moment, and a human heart 
must starve forever because it took too readily that 
which it craved ! Its cry for love must be answered by 
mockeries ; its outstretched hands, trembling with their 


33 


The Tragedy of Silence. 

longing to feel the clasp of other hands, must meet 
empty air, and know that for them there must be no 
responsive pressure, no answering thrill. The sea may 
sing on forever to those who wander mated by her 
shores, and two may watch her waves together, and be 
glad, but a man who sinned for one hour must wander 
forever on the shore unattended ! So much tenderness 
in the world and none for him! A just sentence? A 
living Father? Let me forget to ask these questions. 
Forbid that I should think of these things! There is 
madness in that direction of the mind. Starving, 
starving ! Was I wise to accept a life which shuts the 
door of love against me? Yet what could I have done? 
How better met the world than I have met it? Who 
shall conquer in his wrestle with fate? Fate? Shall 
I talk of fate? I, who proclaim a God who cares for 
the sparrows and carries the lambs m his bosom ? Do 
I, who hold the cross before the eyes of dying men, and 
tell of a Father’s love to little children, believe in fate? 
Alas, I do not know ; and of my doubts, if doubts they 
are, which would so willingly be belief, I must speak to 
no man. And the lambs play two by two, and the 
birds cut the air in pairs. 

^'Was concealment an added wrong? Did she not 
ask wisely to what purpose confession should be 
made? To what end should the violent have spurned 
me, the jeering laughed at me, the compassionate have 
given me that hardest thing of all to bear — pity? I 
may have no answer to my questions. No man must 
hear them. 

‘^Ah, scholars, ye have multiplied words, and the 


34 


A Grain of Madness. 


ages have given you much language. Ye have spoken 
of somber things; of rapine and want, of the passion 
which devastates, the cruelty which tortures, the 
threatening which makes afraid; but the word which 
is most dreadful in the world’s vocabulary is the word 
alone! 

''But my daughter — let me breathe softly, for the 
pines may possess hearing and the sea knowledge — has 
she not received fair treatment at my hands? It not 
Love the great destroyer? Is not its atmosphere one 
of restlessness, of dissatisfaction, of despair? Shall 
not he who supplies its place with an interest which 
engrosses all one’s strength, fills all one’s heart, prove 
a benefactor? Thrice blessed knowledge which en~ 
ables a father to do this for his child! If she should 
marry I must confess all. No man must become her 
husband without being made aware that no marriage 
bed rendered her birth holy. Of what avail then 
my years of penance? Might not the violence, the 
jeers, the pity, have better come at first rather than at 
last, early than late? 

"She shall be happy without marriage. Her will 
shall bend, does bend, like a willow reed beneath my 
own. Art shall serve her as husband, children, home. 
How often does the marriage tie bind and gall. How 
often are its claims disregarded or repudiated. How 
often is the love which should cherish changed into 
the indifference which endures. How often does ma- 
ternity entail woe. Over how many little forms have 
I said the rites for the dying while mothers, with 
bursting hearts, have sought in vain to be reconciled. 


35 


The Tragedy of Silence. 

How does poverty bring dulness, madness and des- 
pair, and how often riches vanish to leave a state of 
life wholly unprepared for. She shall escape the sor- 
rows of love, the agonies of motherhood, the caprices 
of fortune. Nothing shall be denied her because she 
shall ask nothing, want nothing, more than is given. 
Beyond the heart’s longing, beyond the despair of lone- 
liness, her father’s knowledge — breathe softly, ye 
cedars, and ye sea babble not in words that man may 
interpret — her father’s knowledge shall spare her 
these things, and make for her straight paths and 
pleasant places. Right? Who shall say I am not 
right? Is it not merciful to save from pain, to spare 
heartache ? Will she not be honored, happy, satisfied ? 
What matters it whether one’s food be bread or fruit 
if he is thereby saved from hunger? It is all so 
plain, so plain!” 

It was high noon. The fierce heat of summer beat 
steadily down. The distance made the sea appear 
stagnant. The song of the bird was hushed. Along 
the path where the priest walked the stunted-looking 
sweet fern sent up a heavy odor as he brushed it in 
passing with the skirts of his loosely swinging black 
coat. At his right and left stretched a pasture of sun- 
scorched grass and infrequent rills, whose evergreens 
had a sullen look beneath the glare. It was the un- 
pitying meridian of day, with no soft shadows or ten- 
der changes; the hour when this susceptible soul felt 
most alone. Alone! The word had a terrible mean- 
ing for him. Cold, hunger, poverty, obscurity, of 
these he would never have been afraid. His was a 


A Grain of Madness. 


36 

terror of an empty heart, of a house which no one 
made a home. He was a poet in soul, touched by all 
fineness, repulsed by all rudeness, even in his language 
often going back to the time when men had not for- 
gotten gracefulness of speech in their eagerness to con- 
vey many thoughts in few phrases. His love of 
righteousness was strong, his ability to face the world’s 
adverse opinions weak. Having entered with the en- 
thusiasm of a devotee upon a profession which he had 
believed would give his soul delight and his longings 
food, he was too conscientious to withdraw, and yet 
unable, while his heart-hunger was at its keenest, to 
wholly renounce that which his withdrawal would 
have made possible. He was too weak to confess his 
error to man, too just to deny it to himself, unable to 
arrive at any definite and abiding conclusions; a ques- 
tioner at times concerning those things which he had 
been taught to consider as everlastingly settled, yet 
afraid to answer his soul according to its own reason- 
ings, one who over and over argued his own 
case, justified his own conduct, and yet was forever 
in unrest. 

^^Have I not explained? Is it not clear?” 

The question and the arguments were always re- 
peating themselves. He woke at night to go over 
them. They followed him to morning mass and even- 
ing vespers. They obtruded themselves as he sat by 
bedsides waiting for death to come. They seemed to 
be printed on the page where the marriage service ap- 
fieared. They were blazoned on the book which lay 
before him at the altar. 


37 


The Tragedy of Silence. 

The doom which to him was most dreadful, and 
yet which he would not exchange for the world's 
scorn, was upon him. To no one must he tell his story 
or confide his doubts. The gnawing of the heart- 
hunger must be concealed, the wants of the soul borne 
without utterance. Life must be lived to the end un- 
companioned, and the despair of utter loneliness never 
shown. 

It was the devastation of denial, the tragedy of 
silence. 


38 


A Grain of Madness. 


V. 


A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 


The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one 
May hope to achieve it before life be done; 

But he who seeks all things wherever he goes, 

Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows, 

A harvest of barren regrets. 

— Owen Meredith. 

''Why, man, it is inevitable. The Church of Rome 
laid down one of the master principles of progress and 
perfection when it declared that its priests should not 
marry. Large work requires undivided attention. 
The man who is not great enough to pay the largest 
price is not great enough to secure the largest prize. 
Did not he of whom the parable speaks sell all that 
he had to secure the pearl of great price? To-day 
men are clamoring for the pearl of great price, and 
offer as equivalent a tithe of their possessions, a por- 
tion of their talent, the remnant of their strength, the 
inspiration which comes to jaded brains and irritated 
nerves. 

" 'Behold,’ says the sculptor, 'I would evolve won- 
derful creations; forms of might, and power, and 
grace before which the world shall wonder and man- 
kind be mute in admiration. But before I turn my 


A Foregone Conclusion. 


39 


mind wholly to this great thing, before my soul is en- 
tirely consecrated to the work which is myself, my 
fingers utterly given to bringing into blossom the con- 
ceptions of my heart and brain, I will turn aside to 
court some maiden; I will drop my chisel and put 
aside the thoughts which are to become embodied 
things, while the wooed maiden becomes the wedded 
wife ; and yet again thought and tools shall wait while 
a house is being selected and put in order, and the 
sculptor learns how to adjust himself to the duties of 
the husband and the father/ The wooing goes on, the 
marriage is consummated, the house is found and 
furnished, the children are born, the question of food 
and raiment, the extortion of the butcher, the raise in 
the price of coal, the quarrels among servants, or the 
illness of the wife who is forced to do without servants, 
the diseases of the children — a crowding and contigu- 
ous multitude of cares, thrust aside the thoughts which 
might have become things, ambition moves along a 
lower level, accomplishment is shown only in an occa- 
sional good creation, distraction in multiplied failures. 
The man who longed for the best forces himself to 
think that he is content with well enough, and works 
according to his thought. He dies grasping a single 
leaf of the laurel wreath which he might proudly 
have worn. 

Either this, or he is a bad husband whose wife will 
become to him a servant rather than a companion, a 
disperser of dogs and a silencer of cocks, as was the 
case with Jane Carlyle. In either case the man is a 
weakling and a coward. He shirks either the decree of 


40 


A Grain of Madness. 


heaven or the responsibilities of earth. He dare not 
be lonely that he may be great, or shrinks from being 
less than great that he may be true in the less than 
greatness which is of his own devising. 

‘‘Michael Angelo was the embodiment of consecra- 
tion to a lofty ideal. He brought no half sacrifice to 
the altar, no cheap thing to exchange for the pearl 
of great price. He worshipped not before divers gods. 
‘Behold, here am I,^ he said to his divine Mistress, 
‘thy servant, consecrated, heart, brain, hand, time, to 
thy service. I will walk in no by-paths; no voice but 
thine shall allure me. I serve but thee.’ 

“The world’s master sculptor, the ages’ undying 
painter, was the result. Scattered forces do not 
bring forth mightiness. The hand which wields for all 
time must have a single aim.” 

The shaggy head was uplifted, the yellow eyes al- 
most brown. They were sitting on the piazza of the 
small, low house which Father Alpheus occupied, the 
priest and the artist. Something in their conversation 
had suggested the question of the wisdom of forbid- 
ding priests to marry, and this, leading on to 
other things, had launched Vancourt on an ar- 
gument which had evidently been well arranged 
in his thoughts. It was no new belief which 
he uttered, but it was the first time he had 
definitely put it into words. Even now it seemed as 
though he Was as much speaking to himself as to his 
companion. He was not wont to argue. People in 
general considered him careless, curt, cynical, some- 
times moody. His thought seemed to be that there 


A Foregone Conclusion. 41 

were but few with whom it was worth while to be in 
earnest, and talking was not his business. But sitting 
there in the summer dusk, with his attentive com- 
panion, he seemed sufficiently in earnest, sufficiently 
ready to avow himself so. After a moment^s silence 
he went on: 

‘‘Ulysses does not often wish to have his ears 
stopped to the notes of the syrens, but listens and is 
enticed, and lets the destined haven remain unex- 
plored while he obeys his fancies. The charge, in- 
stead of speeding straight to the heart of the mark, 
swerves and is scattered, and only partially sent home, 
and does but indifferent execution. In serving two 
gods neither is fully honored. Consecration is concen- 
tration. Let him who would enter worthily the 
Temple of Art shut the door behind him, and stand 
face to face with his Mistress, seeking no mortal with 
averted or side glances.” 

The priest leaned toward his guest. The dim light 
hid the eager look in his eyes, and in his voice was an 
intense ring as he said: 

“And you? Have you thus entered, with conse- 
crated zeal and allegiance, the Temple of Art? Will 
she be your only mistress ? Have you sworn it ?” 

The artist was too much absorbed in his own train 
of thought to notice anything strange in the manner 
of his host. Still seeming like one who speaks to 
himself, he admitted more than he had ever done be- 
fore. Slowly and distinctly he said : 

“I have sworn it.” 

The almost darkness did not betray the look of sat- 


42 


A Grain of Madness. 


isfaction which came into the face of the priest, who 
began almost immediately to speak of other things ; of 
the stars, of politics, of books and of newly-broached 
theories of science and of religion. 

It was late when Vancourt rose to go. While he 
was standing, before his departure, his future counsel 
was asked for Miss Trescott. 


The Long Bow. 


43 


VI. 

THE LONG BOW. 

How many ages hence, 

Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, 

In states unborn and accents yet unknown? 

— Shakespeare. 

The White Heron had landed her passenger, but 
instead of steering directly back to the island was 
drifting down the harbor with little heed from her 
manager, who was listening to a story. Flotsam was 
the narrator. He sat near the yachtsman, his fair hair 
and loose blouse blown about by the breeze which 
rippled over the waves and swept gently across the 
deck of the little craft. 

Flotsam’s imagination was of the fantastical order, 
and making use of all the knowledge of history, phil- 
osophy, romance, poetry and fairy-lore which his 
omniverous reading supplied, he wove together in 
numerous mazy webs tales of surprising combinations 
and bewildering color. Herr Lessing, whose German 
soul could but acknowledge a secret delight in his 
grandson’s unsubstantial productions, nevertheless felt 
in duty bound to rebuke him now and then, generally 
using some American expression as though to offset 
the feelings of the fatherland. 


44 


A Grain of Madness. 


“Gott in Himmel,” he would ejaculate. “Yon 
scapegrace should be punished for so ‘drawing the 
long bow/ and then listen with the air of one who 
has done his duty. 

“Of course it was aeons and aeons ago/’ Flotsam 
was saying, with a grave face. “Mr. Vancourt and 

Miss Trescott were lions then, and you ” his eyes 

resting for a moment on the straight, lithe-limbed fig- 
ure before him in a searching way as though to make 
a sure identification, “were a panther. Jetsam and I 
were only moats in the air, and Jetsam did not take 
in the brightness of the sun as I did, and so she re- 
mained dark. Of course you big animals — for you 
were so big and fierce! — never thought about us bits 
of dust, but we watched you constantly. We thought 
it must be glorious to be strong like you, but we pitied 
you that you could not fly above the ground and visit 
the way-off beautiful places without walking. The 
blood was so hot and red in the man-lion, and so 
dusky and fierce in the man-panther, and all through 
the aeons since it could only fade; it could not utter- 
ly change. The woman-lion was not so strong as the 
man-lion, and her blood was not so red, and now you 
see Miss Trescott’s hair is only yellow, and her eyes 
are blue, while Mr. Vancourt looks like a lion still, 
for his hair and beard are red, and his eyes like gold 
beads; and you are still dark, and your eyes have a 
deep look like pools where the trout hide. Oh, you 
were so strong, you three! You strode across the des- 
erts and among the jungles, and leaped over wide 
streams, and slew the other large animals for your food, 


45 


The Long Bow. 

and your roars and cries made the hills tremble, and 
the young, small creatures, when they heard them, hid 
themselves and were afraid. 

One day when you, the man-panther, went down to 
the river to drink you met the lioness there, and you 
thought her beautiful, with her mane like the forest 
flowers and her movements like those of tree branches. 
You put your velvet paw upon her neck and caressed 
her, and licked her fur with your long, red tongue. 
The man-lion came upon you as you did this, and he 
was very angry. He lashed his tail and tossed his 
mane, and roared so loudly that the little animals all 
slunk in terror away, keeping close to the ground and 
under the bushes. He fell upon you, and would have 
slain you, but you stood before him, and looked into 
his eyes, and sang a panther-song which was so sweet 
that the river ceased flowing that its gurgle might not 
disturb you. The birds did not finish their songs, 
and the little animals forgot their fright in listening. 
The man-lion was not angry any more. He became 
your friend, and the lioness loved you. You made 
music for all the animals, and birds, and reptiles after, 
that, and whenever you sang everything was still, and 
the river stepped flowing. You roamed with the man- 
lion and the lioness through the long, sunny days, and 
lay down at night with your paw on the mane of the 
lioness. You see the music came through your mouth 
then; now it comes through your fingers. Some day 
the people of all lands will stop to listen as the river, 
and animals, and birds, and reptiles did when you 
were a panther.’’ 


46 


A Grain of Madness. 


Victor Devereux did not seem at all surprised by 
this narrative, but listened as gravely and attentively 
as he would have done to the soberest statement of 
facts. He was well accustomed to these brain- 
mosaics of his boy friend, and so mightily hungry, so 
cruelly athirst for some manner of encouragement, 
some measure of hope, that even this fantastical remi- 
niscence and unsubstantial prophecy gave him a sort of 
comfort. He did not speak, but looked straight ahead 
at the waves with the sunlight upon them, but seeing 
them not, while the yearning, wistful expression which 
was habitual to his face gave place to an eager glow, 
a shining light. 

The vision of the young prophet had risen also be- 
fore him. 

''That was the way you looked when you charmed 
the man-lion, and made the river stand still,” said 
Flotsam. "You will look like that again when you 
charm all the people and compel them to stop and 
hear you.” 

The yacht was brought to the shore some distance 
down the harbor. The two friends alighted and en- 
tered the near wood. 

Under his arm the young man carried a violin case. 
Seating himself upon a fallen tree, he drew the instru- 
ment forth and began to play. 

Vibrating, sobbing, trembling, the appeal of a 
starving soul went out on the summer air. It was 
longing embodied, yearning clothed with form, aspira- 
tion made vocal. Not a twig stirred, not a leaf 
rustled, A squirrel paused in his scramble up the 


The Long Bow. 


47 


trunk of a near beech, and stood with his bright eyes 
on the musician, listening. At the feet of the player 
sat the lad, a fairer creation than mythical lore ever 
furnished, gazing with senses enthralled and lips 
apart, upon the violinist. 

The bushes parted a little distance from the two, 
but they heard no sound. Vancourt began to hastily 
unpack his sketching materials, his artist instinct all 
alive. 

‘T must get that scene on paper,’’ he whispered to 
himself. He began to sketch rapidly, but found him- 
self unable to go rapidly on. His captivated senses 
held his hand poised in air. His brain could not ex- 
press itself in lines and curves while his soul was 
floating away on that intoxicating melody. He 
brought himself sharply back to the task in hand, and 
by a strong force of will compelled himself to continue 
the sketch, but again the mind was wrested from its 
labor, again the hand suspended, again the senses 
taken completely captive, and the man of few moods, 
who laughed at sentiment and rejoiced in his utter self 
control, leaned his head on his easel and felt the hot 
tears come to his eyes. 

What was there in the strains of a violin piercing the 
soft, hushed air to remind one of the terrible wants 
of the world and the unresponsiveness of men? Why 
did the hungry-hearted, the helpless, the despairing, 
all seem to be crying out in those passionately plaintive 
tones? Why did white faces and bloodless lips arise 
before one’s vision? Had the wail of the universe 
found vent through the bow of this unheralded strip- 


48 


A Grain of Madness. 


ling? Had spirits released from earth, but still re- 
membering their by-gone sorrows, chosen this lad to 
voice for them past yearnings, to utter the cries which 
they had on earth forever repressed? By what un- 
taught instinct did this boy-player take to his heart 
and express through his fingers the fierce stress of the 
driven soul, the anguished life? What gave him the 
power of interpreting the travail of multitudes tread- 
ing the world's wine press with feet heavy and torn? 

But hark! The melody is changing. As when the 
rain-fringed storm curtain is lifted a little, showing 
a narrow expanse of yellow and blue, so the despair- 
ing notes are exchanged for strains with a sound of 
hope in them; a sound which grows stronger until it 
becomes a pean of gladness and exaltation. The mind 
horizon and the heart atmosphere are cleared. The 
rose and gold are triumphant. And now, gone, too, 
are the ecstatic notes, and the last strains of the in- 
strument have a sweet, hushed sound like those of a 
cradle song which the mother sings when the child 
has already closed its eyes in sleep. 

The music ceased, the violin was replaced in its 
case, and the musician arose. Vancourt strode for- 
ward, pencil in hand. 

'"You are Victor Devereux, the lad who brings Miss 
Trescott to the mainland," he said abruptly. “Who 
taught you to play?" 

“My uncle, Pierre Devereux, with whom I live on 
the island," was the quiet reply. 

“And can he play like you ?" was the next question. 

“Like me I" exclaimed the lad. “Why, he was once 


The Long Bow. 


49 


a famous maestro, and played before royalty in Ber- 
lin and Paris and Vienna, but now,” sadly, ''he is ill; 
has been ill for years, and cannot move about. It is 
paralysis of the lower limbs.” 

"Could he not send you abroad? You should be 
playing in the places you mention; playing every- 
where. Why, boy, is it possible that you do not know, 
that your uncle does not realize, that you are a 
genius ?” 

"He thinks that I play well, that I might perhaps 
play before audiences,” replied the lad modestly, pal- 
ing and flushing at the artist's words, "but he is alone 
in the world but for me, and very poor. What can 
either of us do?” 

"Very poor! You could make him and yourself 
rich. Shade of Orpheus! To think of two such mu- 
sicians confined on that island ! I am going there some 
day soon to sketch. I shall see your uncle. You are 
not content with your lot?” 

"Content!” 

Only a word, but the question was sufficiently 
answered. 

"Well, it seems to me time that some third person 
took a hand in this affair. I shall go to the island in 
a day or two. Something must be done.” 

The boy's lips quivered. He spoke no word, but 
lifted his liquid eyes to the bearded face of the painter, 
and thanked its owner by a look. 

"The man-lion and the boy-panther,” said Flotsam 
under his breath. "It's almost like when they met by 
the river, ages ago, only the lioness is not here.” 


50 A Grain of Madness. 


yii. 


ENCHANTMENT. 

Wherever she is she will contrive to live at high pressure, 
and justify her existence. — May Kendall. 

Love is your master, for it masters you. 

— Shakespeare. 

Miss Trescott was seeing Paris through the eyes of 
Pierre Devereux. 

Perhaps never to another was life a more vital 
thing than to Helen Trescott. She knew no sluggish 
heart beats. Her existence moved in strong currents, 
abounded in full tones and rapid vibrations. There 
were no prosaic hours in her calendar. The thing of 
the hour claimed her wholly, and became possessed of 
pulsating life and vivid color through her constructive 
thought and illuminating imagination. 

Although her feet had never pressed the soil of any 
country save her own, she was a born cosmopolitan. 
She felt herself akin to all nations, rejoicing in their 
triumphs, agonizing over their national and personal 
tragedies, living, aspiring, suffering, enjoying with 
them. She was not in the little Maine cottage while 
listening to Pierre Devereux, but living the chang- 
ing life of the gay capital of lovely, laughing, un- 


Enchantment. 


51 


fortunate France, equally happy whether her ori- 
flamme be the white flag of Navarre or the tricolor of 
the republic. 

Never were narrator and listener more en rapport. 
They traversed the boulevards, with their sparkling 
life and glittering equipages, entering the shops to 
examine shining silks, rare jewels and priceless works 
of art; they lingered in the cafes and restaurants 
where the celebrities gather to report or invent the 
spicy news of the day; they promenaded with the 
crowds through the streets. They passed beneath the 
colonnaded archways which give entrance to the 
Louvre, and wandered into the Place Napoleon to ad- 
mire its gardens. 

They stood among the massive ruins of the Tuiller- 
ies, and found their way across the shaded grounds to 
that balustraded, pavilioned square in the midst of 
which rises the obelisk of Luxor, which more than 
thirty-two centuries ago was set up in the great temple 
of Thebes by Egypt’s oppressor, Rameses 11. 

In this square, called after a spendthrift king Place 
Louis Fifteenth, then, after its baptism in the blood of 
nobles. Place de la Revolution, and finally, when order 
had been restored, Place de la Concorde, the impres- 
sionable listener heard the quick sound of the guillot- 
ine, for it was to this spot that there were hurried for 
execution the victims of a criminally extravagent court 
and the vindictiveness of a maddened people. 

They crossed the bridges which span the Seine, 
paused before palaces, and gazed at the spires of Ste. 
Clotilde, and the gilded dome of the Invalides. They 


52 


A Grain of Madness. 


lingered among those who were enjoying the open 
air concerts along the Champ Elysees, and then 
wended their way to the place where stands the Arch 
of Triumph begun by the self-made Emperor as a 
monument to his own prowess and that of an army he 
thought invincible, and which was only completed long 
after his imperious heart had broken at St. Helena. 

Many evenings were spent in these thought-wander- 
ings, but the story was never told, the journeyings 
never completed. 

Pierre Devereux the musician was also the patriot 
and the loving child of France. That through the 
world-tossings that strand multitudes on shores alien 
in every aspect to those which their hearts hold dear, 
he should have been flung on this sea-washed bit of 
New England coast, was one of the tragedies whose 
commonness turns the general mind from their 
pathos. 

He gloried in his countries successess, grew eloquent 
over her wrongs, glowed over her magnificence with 
a warmth of tone and vivacity of expression and 
gesture which only a Frenchman could have com- 
manded. 

Only once or twice, encouraged by the sympathy of 
his listener, he spoke of his own youth and its environ- 
ment. He told in a half-sad, half-bitter way of his 
estrangement from his father because the latter could 
not, or would not, understand his son’s determination 
to pursue the calling which from babyhood had pur- 
sued him. He talked of the only daughter of the 
house, and the fierce opposition of the family 


Enchantment. 


S3 


to the handsome American whom she had se- 
cretly met and vehemently loved ; an opposition 
which was finally overcome by the young man’s con- 
sent to take the name of the noble family with which 
he would ally himself. Of the stepson’s torture under 
the private taunts and public insults from which his 
adoption of a name did not save him, and of his final 
removal, with his wife and infant son, to America. 
Of the deaths of the husband and wife, which came 
within a few months of each other, and of his own in- 
heritance of the small property and the care of the 
little Victor. 

When he received the gifts of a nephew and a habi- 
tation the slow but sure paralysis was already creep- 
ing upon the musician, and three years later he sailed 
for the coast of Maine. Having carefully invested the 
small sum which his growing disability had taught 
him to hoard, he took up his abode in the humble 
house, and spent his days in remembering, and in 
teaching his nephew — whose talent and love for music 
astonished and delighted him — the violin and a good 
deal from books. 

When he spoke of his vanished musical triumphs the 
face of Pierre Devereux became transfigured. The 
applauding crowds, among which had been many with 
princely titles and high honors, the richly appareled 
and bejeweled ones who had waved white hands and 
showered rare flowers at his feet; the gay illumina- 
tions, the sensuous delights of perfume, the thunder- 
ous recalls and numerous encores ; all these were again 
delighted in by the man whom even the memory of 


54 


A Grain of Madness. 


them intoxicated, and by the girl who, responsive as a 
chord of electricity and in affinity with all life, 
listened enchanted by his words and her own imagina- 
tion. 

''Who dreamed,’’ she would say gayly to Devereux, 
"that I should find in these solitudes a theater to which 
I could repair whenever the mood seized me? How 
fortunate that Mr. Miller should have brought me 
here to hear you play. I suspect that he knew how 
well you talked, also, and wanted me to enjoy your 
picturings. You are most kind to entertain me so 
charmingly.” 

Not only to Pierre Devereux and Helen Trescott 
were these evenings enchanted. Seated apart, usually 
on the little piazza from which he could look into the 
lighted room, the dark-eyed Victor watched the face 
of the listener and thought of other things than by- 
gone glories and past pleasures. 

Night after night came thoughts, dreams, desires, 
born of earlier hours. He smiled when he thought of 
how often Father Alpheus came down to the wharf to 
see Miss Trescott safely landed. If the priest knew of 
his care for her ! If he was aware that every motion 
of the yacht, which was kept so spotless for her sake, 
was watched and controlled as the mother watches and 
controls the motions of her child ! If he realized that 
should aught of disaster occur that death would be 
sweet to the yachtsman could his life be given for 
hers — what would the man of God think if he knew ! 

Ah, but the mornings were fair, the evenings 
glorious, since her coming. How dainty she was as 


Enchantment. 


55 


she sat in the boat day after day and talked to him! 
Did any other woman wear those loose, light, delicate- 
ly tinted things as the lily wears her bells or the rose 
her petals? Was there, could there be, any one like 
her in all the world? She was to him a revelation, 
a daughter of the gods made perfect. 

That he would charm the people was Flotsam's 
fantastic prophecy, and he would love to do that, not 
so much for their approval as that he might win hers. 
Could he charm her alone or all the remaining people 
he would choose to charm her. It would be glorious 
to be great that she might take note of him, and be 
proud of his friendship and his talent. To do some- 
thing splendid before her ; among thousands to see her 
alone, and to play out all his heart to her, this would 
be life indeed. He used to dream of the applause of 
multitudes; he now dreamed of the appreciation of 
one. He had once longed to gain fame among men; 
he now thought of winning the admiration of one 
woman. That his wide desires had narrowed to one 
intense longing did not seem to him strange. He had 
come to know her. This to him was sufficient expla- 
nation. 

Would the artist keep his word, and would its keep- 
ing result in his going away? He hoped it would, but 
not yet ; not until the summer was ended and she gone. 
Then indeed would it be doubly desirable to leave the 
island which nothing could make pleasant any more, 
and begin to work with all one's soul for that which 
one coveted. 

They called him a boy, he thought, but he was 


56 


A Grain of Madness. 


scarcely a year younger that she, and with her blonde 
freshness and eager manner she seemed even younger 
than she was. If his love for this stranger, who was 
stately as a woman and sunny as a child, was a boy’s 
love, what must a man’s passion be like? 

^'The panther lay with his paw across the neck of 
the lioness; he roamed about with her, and she loved 
him.” 

The dark face glowed at this childish imagining. 
He loved to think of these fictions of the lad’s, and 
fancy they were real. 

Miss Trescott arose, and threw some fleecy thing 
about her shoulders. 

‘Thank you so much,” she said. ‘T shall come again 
soon if I may.” 

Victor walked with her to the Miller cottage. On 
the left Venus was melting into the blue-black sky, 
her rays making a glinting track of brightness on the 
sea. 

“Is she not beautiful!” exclaimed Miss Trescott, 
lingering a little, and gazing at the planet and the 
waves. 

“So beautiful!” replied the lad. 

But he was not thinking of the star. 


The Woman that Remained. 57 


VIII. 

THE WOMAN THAT REMAINED. 

To draw true beauty shows a master hand. 

— Dryden. 

He who is firm in will moulds the world to himself. 

— Goethe. 

The artist was the woman that remained. 

Never before had the painter's zeal so burned within 
the nerves of Helen Trescott as it burned there on the 
Maine coast. Never before had the night seemed so 
long in departing, the daylight so quick in fading. 
The girl's always vivid temperament was aflame with 
force. Heart and hand were alike eager. Hour after 
hour she worked with entire absorption, without a 
word, with hardly a perceptible breath, holding 
pencil or brush in strong, steady fingers, using each 
with a rapid accuracy which astonished and delighted 
Vancourt. 

The passion which dominated the life of the artist 
made him, instead of this girl's occasional critic, her 
watchful and constant instructor. He would not have 
dreamed that such a state of things could come about. 
It was no part of his life-plan to put aside his own 
work that he might wa^ch that of another, entirely for- 


58 


A Grain of Madness. 


eign to his habits to think with any degree of solicitude 
about another's methods or progress; and he was do- 
ing both. 

The moral strength of the young painter interested 
him. She could put away small things for great. She 
could estimate a thing truly. She did not defile sacred 
tools. She loved Art rather than the name of artist. 
She sought not prestige but power; not the praise of 
men, but the expression of her own soul. He owned 
her kinship to himself, and realized that in her conse- 
cration had found its comrade, enthusiasm its mate. 
He grew to feel that he owed her something, or rather 
that he owed Art something which could be rendered 
through her. No devotee should be allowed to work 
unworthily for want of knowledge. Those who loved 
the Mistress should, when possible, see that the offer- 
ings brought her were of a superlative order. 

He was not a patient teacher, seldom a pleasant one. 
Praise did not come readily to his lips, but defects 
called forth no slow or uncertain comments. Every 
unstudied or overstudied stroke was an abomination 
to him, every untrue line a torture. 

In New York Miss Trescott had been taught, or 
rather neglected, by one who, too much absorbed in 
his own affairs to give personal attention to the work 
of others, had, for the most part, put the instruction of 
his pupils into the hands of an inferior artist. Hence, 
in spite of the usual correctness which her own talent 
and artistic taste ensured, she sometimes brought upon 
herself the ready scorn and quickly kindled anger of 
her present instructor. She had asked that there might 


The Woman that Remained. 59 


be perfect frankness between them, and verily her re- 
quest was granted. 

‘'Your picture lacks harmony, and its tone is 
atrocious,’’ the teacher would exclaim with his heav- 
iest frown. “Was gradation utterly left out of your 
instructions? Have you learned nothing of values? 
That line is not sincere, this stroke is not true. You 
are copying, you are trying to imitate. See how this 
changes the whole thing.” 

And the brush would be snatched from her hand 
and a few carefully furious strokes give the painting 
a new atmosphere. 

“Sketch with instinct, or put aside your pencil. 
You will never paint aught that is worthy unless you 
first see it with your soul.” 

These words the pupil heard again and again. She 
never thought of being angry or hurt. The words 
were nothing, their meaning was everything. She 
would regain pencil or brush, and with sincere but 
absent thanks, turn again to portfolio or canvas, 
anxious to utilize her new acquisition of knowledge. 

And day after day under this masterly tyrannical 
oversight and criticism her work became less liable to 
offend her teacher. No time was too long to linger 
over minute lines if they at last became perfect, no 
experiments in light and shade too prolonged and ex- 
haustive, no studies of atmosphere and perspective too 
exacting, if ultimate results were satisfactory. 

She had come to be ardent hy rule, to recognize the 
mightiness of detail. 

One day Vancourt paused long before something 


6o 


A Grain of Madness. 


which she had wrought line by line, shade by shade, 
true in tone and atmosphere, wonderful in gradations 
and values, painted with her heart full of vibrant emo- 
tion and her hand compelled to linger carefully over 
every minutest line. 

*'Only an artist could have done that,’’ he said. 
“You will succeed. Your dream of painting out your 
soul will come true.’^ 

Miss Trescott raised her glowing face, and put out 
her hand. 

“You give me faith in myself,'' she said. “I do in- 
deed thank you." 

“Tell me of them, the masters," she would say, when 
the sun was low, and the light no longer sufficient for 
painting. Then would Vancourt forget to be silent 
and cease to be brief, and while the lessening light 
made bright patches under the trees and on the grass 
or mosses, would speak with an authority gained by 
close and many-times repeated observation of the 
works of painters, ancient and modern; of the power- 
ful, pathetic productions of Angelo, Rembrandt, 
Leonardo, Tinteretto, Veronese, Correggio, and 
others; of the paintings of those who came between 
these masters and the lighter artists of our time ; of the 
pure texture painting of Jan Steen, Don, Hals and 
Netscher; of the landscapes of the French painters, 
Corot, Rosseau, Daubigny and Diaz; of the realistic 
productions of Vollon, Stevens and Gerome ; of the ex- 
quisite marines and deer paintings of DeNittis and the 
river banks and meadows of Troyon. 

The long twilight would deepen into early night as 


The Woman that Remained. 6i 


the talk went on. Fresh breezes, bearing the sound of 
bells on home-coming cows, would float up from the 
harbor where rocked the tiny yacht, waiting for its 
passenger. The boy. Flotsam, more beautiful than any 
of the masterly creations of which his friend spoke, 
would sit between the two painters, thinking little of 
the words he heard, but weaving in his mind fanciful 
tales concerning speaker and listener. Then Miss 
Trescott, with a pretty show of compunction at 
having kept her “gondolier,’’ as she gayly called young 
Devereux, waiting, would trip down the hill, Vancourt 
striding by her side. Flotsam flying with the grace of 
a zephyr in front of her. ^ 

How glad the world was, how rich in happiness 
and in promise, thought the girl who lived her life so 
rapidly and tumultuously. 

What simpletons people were, thought Vancourt, to 
confine themselves to cities and centers of fashion, to 
bore themselves with dinners and dances, and surfeit 
themselves with many-times breathed air and small 
talk, while such largeness and soul-satisfaction lay 
outside and away from it all. 

His parishioners wondered a little at the intimacy 
which had sprung up between Father Alpheus and the 
artist, an intimacy which after Miss Trescott’s arrival 
seemed to increase. The priest, usually so reserved 
and reticent, courted the company of the painter, often 
invited him to share his evening meal, and talked with 
him by the hour. 

“The daughter of my old friend,” he said one even- 
ing when six weeks of the passing summer had gone. 


62 


A Grain of Madness. 


bringing the conversation around as he always man- 
aged to do, to Miss Trescott. '‘I promised to write 
her mother from time to time of her progress. Will 
you, who are a judge of such matters, tell me, who am 
so ignorant of them, what I may say to Mrs. Trescott? 
Does her daughter show herself an artist? Can it be 
confidently hoped that she will do more than ordinarily 
good work?'’ 

The two were sitting on the piazza where so many 
of their evening hours were passed. Venus hung, 
like a celestial lamp, in the luminous sky. There was 
no moon. 

'Tndeed she is beautiful, wondrously beautiful !" ex- 
claimed Vancourt, his face lighted by one of those 
radiant gleams which sometimes transformed it. 

The priest started, and the hands on the arms of 
his chair grew icy cold. 

Would the artist forget his oath? Since he had so 
soon found her beautiful, would he not love her, seek 
to wed her? Had the thing which in this lonely place 
had seemed impossible, been only precipitated by the 
isolation ? 

'T wish," said Vancourt, ''there might prove to be 
truth in the speculation that we shall inhabit the 
planets after death. I should pray that I might find a 
home in Venus. But then, I suppose, like most things, 
she would suffer by near approach." 

The numb fingers of the priest lost their tension; 
the feeling of fierce fear clutching his heart subsided. 
The man was speaking of the star. 

Vancourt had heard and understood the words of 


The Woman that Remained. 63 

the priest, and his last observation had come because 
of a new and strange reluctance to speak of Miss Tres- 
cott's progress. He had always disliked to talk of his 
own work, and hers had come to seem like his own. 
Why must people pry and gossip? Why could they 
not wait for results and revelations, and not be 
eternally clamoring for signs along the way? 

But Father Alpheus was evidently waiting for a 
reply, and he answered him in a brief and careless man- 
ner, and in words utterly at variance with his true 
feeling and belief. 

‘Wour pardon,’’ he said. ‘^My mind was up there 
in space. You asked about Miss Trescott. She cer- 
tainly shows talent, but 'Art is long’ you know, and 
persistence and insistence are not always let on long 
leases. One oftener falters by the way, and goes after 
strange gods, than keeps straight on to the hoped-for 
goal.” 

"But,” insisted the priest, "should she by some 
special gift of Providence have the insistence and sin- 
gleness of purpose to put by all else and give herself as 
entirely and heartily to Art as you have done, what 
would be the result ?” 

"She would some day paint a great picture; per- 
haps many great pictures,” said Vancourt, forgetting 
to speak carelessly, and addressing himself rather than 
his listener. "She would be known, appreciated, satis- 
fied to forego all else, and cling to this one thing. 
She would utterly lose her soul to Art, and find it in 
Art.” 

The artist had said good night an hour since. The 


64 


A Grain of Madness. 


chill and hush of midnight was about the place. Venus 
was riding high in the blue. 

Within his room the priest sat, all his mental force 
gathered in one place for one purpose. Time, place, 
the deadly chill of the newly born morning, were un- 
realized. Unconsciously the fingers were clasped to- 
gether so tightly that they creased and marked each 
other. The eyes and lips had a set look like those of 
one who has forgotten to stir a muscle. 

One clear, steady, ‘ concentrated thought, which had 
become a command, was going forth in an unbroken, 
unweakened, uninterrupted current to work the will 
of its originator and make it another's will. 

In her room on the island Helen Trescott awoke 
from sleep, and lifted her head from the pillow, won- 
dering if a storm was coming. The air about her 
seemed palpitating with electricity, throbbing with 
magnetism. Could it be that the tall clock in the kitch- 
en had struck only one? She wished it were day- 
light that she might paint. Why was it necessary for 
people to waste so much time in sleep and darkness? 

She arose and looked out of her window. The sea 
was still. There were no clouds. Venus was too high 
in the heavens to be seen. 


Honeysuckle and Rue. 


65 


0 

IX. 

HONEYSUCKLE AND RUE. 

For with memories I am haunted, 

And the silence seems to beat 
With the music of your talking, 

And the coming of your feet. 

— Louise Chandler Moulton. 

Love is merely a madness; and I tell you deserves as well 
a dark house and whip as madmen do. — Shakespeare. 

Miss Trescott had gone away. 

A telegram had been sent from the nearest railroad 
station to the Island. Victor had brought the message 
to the mainland, and searched till he found its owner, 
the yellow envelope, whose enclosure he instinctively 
felt meant disaster to his friend, in his hand. 

He gave it to her, murmuring broken words of re- 
gret, as though he had been the author of whatever 
woe might be in store for her. 

She tore off the cover, her eyes large with apprehen- 
sion. The words written stunned her for a moment, 
and left no clear impression on her brain, but when 
she had read them for the third time she turned to 
young Devereux and said in a forced voice : 

‘^My mother is dying. I must go to her.’ 


66 


A Grain of Madness. 


Her form swayed a little. The news was so terribly 
sudden ! It came as the bullet comes, as the star falls. 
She put out her hand in a blind sort of way, still look- 
ing at Victor Devereux, and the lad passed his arm 
around her shoulder to give the momentary support 
which she needed. 

She recovered almost instantly, and handed the tele- 
gram to Vancourt, asking him to see that it was sent 
to Father Alpheus, then kissing Flotsam in an absent 
way, she shook hands with the artist, and without re- 
membering to gather up her sketching materials or 
speak of their disposal, went swiftly towards the yacht. 

''Can I do nothing?'' asked Vancourt in an oddly 
constrained tone. "You will wish to be taken to the 
station." 

"Victor will see to it all, thank you," she had re- 
plied without pausing in her rapid walk. 

In an hour she had left for the West. 

There had been no conscious intention of selection 
when she had turned to young Devereux in those first 
moments of bewilderment. She never afterwards 
realized or remembered what occurred during those 
seconds when a thing which had a moment before 
been utterly undreamed of seemed to have grown so 
drearily old. Who has not known the way fresh sor- 
row has of impressing one with a feeling that he has 
never been without it? 

But three people realized and remembered what had 
happened in those endlessly brief minutes. 

She had gone away. The island and the mainland 
were alike desolate. The atmosphere seemed empty. 


Honeysuckle and Rue. 


67 


and all space aching for her presence. Life had lost its 
pulse, existence had a swept and garnished feeling; 
there was a sensation of the uselessness of all things. 

Victor Devereux roamed about alone, or sat by the 
hour sending out from his violin the throbbings of his 
passionately lonely heart. 

But as when storm-clouds cover the heavens there 
sometimes appears in their midst a point of light, so 
to him there was one radiant gleam amid the general 
darkness. 

It was to him that she had first turned in her sor- 
row. It was his arm that had supported her when 
she would perhaps have fallen. 

And Vancourt had been near; as near as himself. 

It was such a precious thing to think of ! Something 
to cover in his heart as grass covers the star-flower 
in the meadow; something to be looked upon daintily 
and softly, as the mother, putting aside the lace of 
the canopied cradle, looks upon the little face beneath. 
Something to dream over, lying face downward among 
the mosses, to be glad over among the still places of 
the forest; to thrill over where the low song of th^ 
waves was heard on the sheltered shore. 

What sweet presage and divine presentiment he 
dared to believe was in that act of hers ! 

His imaginings had the shyness and delicacy of a 
poet; his fervor was that of a lover. 

He had taken her to the station, had checked her 
luggage, and seen her safely bestowed in the railway 
carriage. To him had been spoken her last words. 

She had turned to Victor Devereux in the first shock 


68 


A Grain of Madness. 


of her sorrow; turned to him instinctively, and the 
arm of the lad had been about her neck, and in his 
eyes something more than sympathy. How tall and 
manly the boy was. He had not noticed these things 
before, the artist thought. It was a man^s arm which 
had held her, a man to whom she had turned. 

And Vancourt cared; cared with burning impatience 
and fierce pain. He realized that he woiMd have count- 
ed it much had those first words been addressed 
to him, had his arms prevented her fall. 

A shudder passed over him as he mechanically 
gathered up the sketching materials, having sent Flot- 
sam to Father Alpheus with the telegram. 

He sat down near the collected articles, and faced the 
unwelcome new truth. 

A catastrophe had overtaken him, an undreamed-of 
thing thrust itself upon him. As the knowledge of 
her sorrow had come to her, so had come to him 
the realization of his passion ; as the meteor shoots, as 
the lightning darts. He was stricken with a sort of 
paralysis, and sat for hours motionless, like one who 
has been hypnotized and is unreleased. It was grow- 
ing dark when he at last arose, shook himself as though 
to throw off the numbness of body and brain, and 
went towards the village. 

A battle royal had begun in the life of the artist. 
He was no longer numb, but tossed about by his pas- 
sion, his remorse, his resistance as floating spars are 
tossed by the breakers which have wrecked the ship 
of which they were part. 

As the time went by he was angry that the freedom 


Honeysuckle and Rue. 69 

which the absence of Miss Trescott gave to him to re- 
turn to his work was valueless to him, enraged when 
he found himself counting the days till her probable 
return, humiliated at the relization that if the hamlet 
was destitute of inhabitants as Selkirk’s island it could 
not be more lonely to him. 

He could not perceive with his characteristic insight, 
or paint with his usual force. He dashed on colors 
with reckless impetuosity and again and again drove 
his closed hand through the canvas, and then tearing 
it from the easel, dashed it to the ground. 

He cursed himself as a criminal, and turned the lash 
of his sarcasm upon himself as upon a fool. He tore 
at his newly forged fetters like a Samson raging at 
unaccustomed bands. His mental chastisement of 
himself was as severe as though his present condition 
was self-planned, his emotions self-evolved and invited. 
He despised himself as being on a level with any un- 
consecrated trifler without ideas or ideals, as one who 
vowed vows and dishonored them, registered oaths and 
disregarded them. He was humiliated, defiant, furious. 
The contest never flagged save in the few hours of 
sleep which exhaustion made possible. He strode up 
and down the beach where the breakers beat tumultu- 
ously against the rocks, and through deep forest ways 
which no man frequented, snapping and trampling the 
dead boughs, twisting his beard into a red rope, and 
gathering his brows into a heavy frown. 

One thought was predominant, — he would not be 
coerced, or turned from his life-purpose and allegiance 
by the disaster of passion or the devastation of love. 


70 


A Grain of Madness. 


He stood with uncovered head as before a tangible 
presence, and cried with a voice vibrant with emotion : 

"‘Great Mistress under whom alone I bow myself, 
and send up my soul’s incense, discard me not in my 
disloyalty ! I will be wholly thine own again ! I have 
sworn it.” 

Day after day he renewed this vow. 

He saw nothing of Father Alpheus. A day or two 
after the delivery of the telegram he had called at the 
house of the priest, and had heard with a sense of relief 
that he could not be admitted. Father Alpheus was 
il! with a slow fever which kept him in bed, and had 
begged that callers would defer their visits till he was 
stronger. 

Should he go away before Miss Trescott’s return 
was the question Vancourt asked himself. The answer 
was an indignant negative. Fly before the first assault 
of passion, thus acknowledging its power over him? 
Make a rampart of distance behind which to shelter 
his weakness? Never! He would remain, and if hu- 
man, nay, superhuman, devotion could blot out dis- 
loyalty, this enthrallment should lose itself in accom- 
plishment as waves lose themselves in the sea. He 
would be his own master and her teacher. He would 
tolerate nothing short of perfection in himself or her, 
and thus both should unite to make impossible that of 
which another might have dreamed as the outcome of 
this emotion. Circe was beckoning and entreating. 
He defied the syren, and vowed to come greatly into 
his intended port with not a sail furled, not a shred 
of canvas dishonored. 


Honeysuckle and Rue. 71 

Flotsam had looked at Vancourt as young Devereux 
passed his arm around Miss Trescott's shoulder, and 
had seen his face flush darkly, and his eyes become 
a dusky yellow. 

^'He is angry,” thought the child. ‘'He was angry 
ages ago when the panther put his paw on the mane 
of the lioness. The panther should have his music 
ready to charm him now.” 


72 


A Grain of Madness. 


X. 

SHADOWS OF HEAVINESS. 

The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past. 

— Carlyle. 

^^Dead ! And a throng of strangers may bend above 
your face, and they who cared for you not at all put 
flowers in your bosom, and touch your hair, while I, 
who loved you so, ay, who love you so still, — shadows 
ye are voiceless, yet will I speak low, and loneliness ye 
have no tongue, yet I half fear you, — I who love you 
so am thousands of miles away, and must not move 
from my place. I am helpless before the wonder which 
my little world would feel should a poor priest travel 
so far for the funeral of a friend however old and 
dear. 

‘'Indifference may bring its curiosity, and friendli- 
ness fill the white hands with flowers, but the strongest 
love may gather no rose for its dead, and break its 
heart in silence. 

“Oh, to throw aside these robes, which belong to 
men whose passions have never awakened, or have been 
strangled forever, and take her still form in my arms, 
and call her mine in death as she was once in life ! 

“I rave. Would I really put aside the robe of the 


Shadows of Heaviness. 73 

priest ? Am I a hypocrite in wearing it ? Impossible ! 
And yet, and yet 

‘‘Dead ! And I here ! Cruel ! Cruel ! Whose cruel- 
ty ? Who is responsible for the tangle and the torment 
of tortured lives and misunderstood souls? My mis- 
eries are the brood of my own hatching? Who shall 
declare it so and be able to defend his position ? Why 
were men born at all? Am I my own creation and 
master ? Is any man these things ? Is he not the pro- 
duct of a thousand personalities before his own, the 
slave of a multitude of circumstaces which form en- 
vironment and shape destiny, of millions of emotions 
born not with him or controllable by him; the center 
and playground of numberless influences none, or few, 
of which were of his own making? Is not the past 
mightier to him that the present? Is he in any sense 
free? 

“Who shall call him free who through heredity has 
had bequeathed to him a temperament as sensitive as 
the mercury in the tube, which the pressure of a finger 
on the glass will raise or lower, passions strong as the 
north wind and fierce as the lightning, nerves as 
easily moved as thistledown, pride which makes every 
word of scorn a flame, and is thrust out into the world 
to be the plaything of others as complex as himself? 

“Can he by struggling free himself from the domin- 
ion of inherited characteristics? Who shall think on 
these things and still declare himself no slave ? 

“And yet God loves His children. Does He ? Does 
love leave souls in desolation, and hunger, and travail ? 
How can one be sure of a beneficent ruling power 


74 


A Grain of Madness. 


amid so much misery and misrule? Great God! Is 
there no rest? I tell my people of rest. Do they find 
what their teacher can only speak of from books? 
Has any one really found rest? Will he ever find it 
here or hereafter? Is there a hereafter? A world 
where I shall see her, and know her, and acknowledge 
her as my own? Is not life what Heine thought it, 
a child lost in the dark? To what end do we strive 
and struggle, put desire in leash, bind passion, smother 
love of delight as a child of iniquity? Of what avail 
are energy and effort, the thirst for knowledge, the 
struggle for place ? ' Are not the insects which float in 
the summer sun, which live without thought of life and 
die without fear of death, more blessed than we, who 
toil under hope, groan under despair, and sacrifice 
present joy for that which may be only an Oriental tra- 
dition, a legend woven by dreamers of the East? 

‘Tf a man dies shall he live again? What shall as- 
sure us that in our turnings from coveted delights we 
are not bartering something for nothing? By what 
certain things shall doubt be met, apprehension si- 
lenced? Why does not frenzied supplication and soul- 
dictated prayer bring answer to these questions? Is 
it because there is no God to hear? 

“And / ask these things! My people come to con- 
fess faint doubts, petty waverings, and the man whose 
soul is sick with uncertainty bids them believe, and 
be of good cheer, gives them absolution, breaks the 
bread for them, and they eat and are satisfied, while 
he whose hands puts it to their lips is starving, doubt- 
ing, dying for want of heart sustenance. 


Shadows of Heaviness. 


75 


^'Wicked? Great God, if God indeed there be, can 
one be accounted wicked for thoughts which rush un- 
bidden and unwelcomed, into his mind ? Can belief be 
forced ? Can unbelief be shut away as we bar our doors 
against thieves, by an action of the will ? Must one be 
considered wicked for harboring that which he hates, 
and would so gladly hurl from him once and forever? 

''Alas ! I can answer nothing, and nothing answers 
me. If souls of the dead live why does she not answer 
me? She loved me well. Has physical death changed 
her utterly? Does she not remember, or has she not 
yet realized, that the silence between us may now be 
broken? If law which deals only with results, and 
gives no thought to causes, reigns in heaven, in what 
are men bettered by entering there? 

"Oh, this stumbling in the dark with feet that would 
fain go forward in lighted ways! this groping among 
shadows with hands that, longing to hold in certain 
clasp the rod of faith, close only upon a reed of un- 
certainties 1” 

For two weeks the priest had lain ill. He needed 
rest the people said, speaking more truly than they 
knew. 

Miss Trescott had been a fortnight away. Seven 
days after her departure Father Alpheus had received 
a telegram signed by her saying that her mother was 
dead, and a letter received later told him the particulars 
of the illness, death and burial of his friend, and that 
when the daughter should return he would receive a 
sealed package which the dying woman had directed 
should be given to him. 

The monotony of the colorless years, the never-ceas- 


76 


A Grain of Madness. 


ing craving of a starving heart, the want of satisfac- 
tion in all that pertained to existence, were the sledges 
whose silent, persistent blows on a too-sensitive and 
flexible material had hammered it into unwelcome 
shapes. 

The unrecognized madness which grows out of dis- 
torted, constantly reiterated thoughts, the unstamped 
insanity which is the result of puzzling problems long 
dwelt upon and wholy unshared; the feverish view 
which a too-fixed and never-varying gaze makes in- 
evitable, — these things had done their work of partial- 
ly unhinging the mind and uprooting the principles 
of the priest. 

He was, by his own desire, left almost entirely alone 
during these days of illness. 

He slept little and took almost no food. .His whole 
being was in a tumult. This latest calamity which had 
overtaken him was like the fuse which fires the train 
already laid. Slumbering thought took shape, bridled 
impressions became active ideas, doubt shook his soul, 
reason, with its pitiless insistence upon logical deduc- 
tions, tossed him about as a toy boat is tossed on swell- 
ing waves. He fled frantically to the promises of the 
Gospel, and paused sick at heart before the thought 
that no one could declare with confidence that these 
Gospels were not of man’s invention. To no one in his 
church, or in any church, could he go, for to no one he 
believed had there been vouchsafed knowledge of 
heavenly things which had not as certainly been given 
to him. 

His mental atmosphere stifled him. His spiritual 


Shadows of Heaviness. 


77 


lungs could not draw from it the breath of life. The 
sea on which he was adrift seemed shoreless. The 
compass had broken, and his oars had slipped from 
his hands. 

Desolation covered him like a garment, despair shut 
her iron door in his face. 

Should he arise from his bed of bodily sickness 
and mortal doubt and continue his priest’s work ? 

'Why not?” he said wearily. “No harm can come 
of it. If it be true what my people doubt not and I 
so long to believe, surely the Lord will remember that 
I break the bread not unworthily, since I am so anx- 
ious to have faith, and if it be only a superstition which 
makes them to eat of this bread, still let them be 
happy. Better happiness with ignorance than de- 
spair with knowledge. Let them live their lives 
with peace purchased at any price. It is the heritage 
I most devoutly wish for them. And for me — what? 
Will the end come soon? And after that, what? O 
God if thou didst make me I am thy child. Give me an 
answer ere my heart turns to stone, and my thoughts 
become those of a madman. Leave me no longer in 
this torment. Show me some certain sign that thou 
livest, that thy heaven is not an imagination of dream- 
ers ! I faint in my loneliness, and sink in my helpless- 
ness. O Christ, if thou dost indeed exist, and did 
indeed die for us, I implore thee by the wounds in 
thy feet, by the spear thrust in thy side, by the drops 
of agony on thy forehead, make known unto me that 
by which I can arise from this place of torment, and 
enter thy courts with heart triumphant, and feet which 
know the way of their going !” 


78 


A Grain of Madness. 


XL 

IN PALLID LAND. 

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange. 

— Shakespeare. 

A tender mysterious night, a land of those shadows 
which come between the lingering morning darkness 
and the hastening morning light. An atmosphere 
pale as the silver mist which rises over lowland mead- 
ows while the day is still half unborn. A soft, caress- 
ing night without the harshness of blackness, or the 
coldness of gloom. 

The priest is lingering in this land of half lights. 

‘'He seems to sleep. He takes no food, and scarcely 
swallows the wine which is poured between his lips. 
Father Henry has visited him several times, but he 
does not waken when spoken to. I fear he is very ill.’’ 

So spoke the housekeeper, a gray haired woman 
from another parish, educated, refined, and a recluse. 

Very ill. Had the priest reasoned of the matter he 
would have declared that for the first time in years 
he was certainly well, for the first time at peace. 

The half-night which existed for him held him as 
tenderly as the rose holds its heart. People came to 
his bedside, and looking on the v/an, white features 


V 


In Pallid Land. 


79 


and sunken cheeks, declared that certainly this must 
be death. Rocked in the lullaby of his fancies, drawn 
away from reasoning, longing, loneliness ; at rest from 
desires and doubts, the priest thought, with hushed 
exultation, '^Surely this is life!’’ 

The only sound familiar to his everyday senses 
which he heard now was that of the sea. In the trance- 
like sleep which held him he took note of the monotone 
of the waves, and listened for the breaking of the surf 
against the rocks. This sound had for years given him 
a feeling of companionship, almost his only one, and 
now it remained, and mingled as harmoniously with 
his sensations as sunlight with air, or mist with rain. 

He seemed floating in a sea of ether as formless and 
void as was the new world before the voice of God 
spoke order out of chaos, all about him a gray mist, 
with him no sensation but that of rest and peace. 
Nothing more for hours. Then at the left of him the 
mist begins to be broken by a shimmer of rose and 
gold. It parts, and is folded back like a curtain of 
filmy lace. At right and left the softly piled grayness 
falls in overlapped masses of silver whose edges are 
lightly touched with the gleam behind them, which is 
a halo rather than a ray. A background of blue is dis- 
closed, above and beneath which, in unformed grace- 
fulness and unarrayed beauty, drop the melting folds. 
Nothing for many minutes against the space of soft- 
test, clearest blue. But behold! A picture is being 
formed, a Face is appearing. Clearly and more clearly 
the outlines are defined. The gaze of the priest is riv- 
eted upon the miracle which is growing before his 


8o 


A Grain of Madness. 


eyes. As though some invisible artist was at work 
with quick but never-erring brush, line after line ap- 
pears, feature after feature grows distinct. The 
Face becomes rounded into perfect contour, flushed 
with life and beauty. The curling brown hair, soft 
with the softness of a child’s locks, is tossed away from 
the full brow as though displaced by the breeze. The 
perfect, tenderly masterful lips are hidden by no beard. 
The strongly delicate features need nothing to add to 
their perfection. The veins on the white temples are 
distinctly visible. The eyes, with their hue of the deep 
places of the sea, more luminous than the velvet depths 
of the nearest, fairest star, and with the very smile of 
God within them, are meeting the eyes of the gazer 
with a look that burns straight to his soul. The cover- 
ing falls away from the strong, graceful throat, leaving 
the neck exposed. The face is seen in two thirds pro- 
file. The head is uplifted in a way suggesting might 
which is not haughtiness, power mixed with no trace of 
assumption. Across the azure background and around 
the Face, veiling but not concealing it, is a softly lumi- 
nous glow, a tender shining on which one might gaze 
as on the low sinking sun. 

In ecstasy the priest beholds the vision. Without 
effort he absorbs into his memory the tenderly mas- 
terful lips, the heavenly smile of the eyes, the fair hair, 
the blue-veined brow, and his heart goes out in a word- 
less, burning longing towards this overwhelmingly 
beautiful creation. 

Whose is this marvelous Face? Surely no mortal 


In Pallid Land. 


8i 


countenance was ever so grandly-soft, so majestically 
tender! Whose is this Face? 

He asks the question mentally, and as though in 
answer there flashes across his mind words familiar 
but now fraught with a new illumination and mean- 
ing. 

^^Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast 
thou not known me 

The words of Christ. But this could not be Christ. 

The countenance of Jesus of Nazareth was sad. The 
sorrow of years short by days but long by suffering 
was in his face. This was not the countenance of the 
God-man Who toiled up Calvary, bowed beneath an 
outward and inward cross. The marks of a mighty 
travail were upon that face, and the hair was matted 
to the temples by the thorn-brought blood. Anguish 
had traced itself upon that countenance. The Re- 
deemer had died a death that branded and burned its 
marks of suffering upon his features. 

The thoughts of the priest become disconnected. 
Parts of familiar sentences, taking new meaning from 
their new surroundings, mingle with his attempts at 
reason. The Christ was crushed, and humiliated, 

and broken, and killed '‘Death is swallowed up 

in victory.’’ Had not painter and sculptor ever drawn 
the Christ of the anguished brow, the pain-transfixed 
countenance? This Face. . . ."to sit on the right hand 
of God”...."0 death, where is thy sting ?”.... "I 
make all things new”. . . ."There shall be no more sor- 
row”.... "to me is given all power in heaven and 
earth” .... All power in heaven, and unhappiness 


82 


A Grain of Madness. 


there? . . . “The Son of man shall come in his 

glory.” 

Power, glory, victory? All things new? Former 
things done away? Surely the cross and the anguish 
and the shame were former things. 

The very thoughts of the priest stand still. There 
is the hush of a great awe in his heart, and his hand 
goes up to his face to shut out for an instant the vision 
which a half-feared recognition has made so grandly 
awful. He scarcely whispers the words, but they 
come, breathed with an intensity which makes them 
distinctly audible. 

^THE VICTORIOUS CHRIST 

And now the watcher sees about the wonderful Head 
large, melting, lustrous stars which float with an undu- 
lating movement, ever keeping their orbit in the small 
sphere of blue. But behold ! they are drawing nearer 
to each other, nearer to the wonderful Face. They 
circle about the perfect Head, and then melting into 
consecutive places, link themselves together as a crown 
which touches the blue-veined forehead and the cluster- 
ing hair, and wreathes itself about the regal brow. 
They have lost none of their brightness, but have taken 
to themselves new and marvelous colors. In the center 
of the forehead is a star of luminous whiteness; the 
star of purity. On its right glows the red star of love 
and of power. On its left shimmer the blue rays of 
the star of constancy. Next are seen the golden rays 
of the star of hope. On the right of the red star 
quivers the delicate lavender orb of intuition and per- 
ception, and joined to it is the pink-rayed star of com- 


In Pallid Land. 83 

passion, whose nearest companion is the soft-hued, 
amber star of tenderness. 

It flashes out its meaning to him, this star-crown, in 
a thousand rays. It plays in shining beauty, and 
clothes itself in wonderful suggestions. The priest 
reads its signs, and comprehends the language of its 
hues. His heart goes out in intense, wondering adora- 
tion. He does not know how long the vision lingers. 
For him time has ceased to be. 

Presently the star-crown begins to fade. It becomes 
a ray of white light, and then disappears. Back into 
the mist the pictured Face melts. The gray closes over 
the blue. 

The priest stretches out his hands; his spirit hands, 
for his material hands are still motionless, and his 
spirit voice whispers with vibrating earnestness: 

“O thou wonderful One, leave me not to the barren- 
ness of former times. May I not speak to thee and 
receive thine answer before thou leavest me alone ? It 
has hitherto been so dreary, and I have called to thee 
mightily, and thou wert afar off.’^ 

The mist remains where the Vision has been, but 
into the mind of the priest flash words as old as the 
rainbow, but repeated with personal phrasing, fraught 
with new meaning and promise which seem fresh as 
the dew dropped that morning upon the grass. 

‘T will lead thee in a way thou knowest not. . . .a 
little child shall lead thee .... the Comforter shall come 
.... I will abide with thee .... fear not ....’’ 

The sea sounded on, and the sojourner in pallid land 
heard it and was glad. 


84 


A Grain of Madness. 


Slowly the mist floated away, slowly came the con- 
sciousness of human presence, the realization of earthly 
faces about his bed. 

‘‘The breath is more perceptible,” declares the phy- 
sician, “and his heart beats more strongly. We may 
hope that all will now* go well.” 

The priest opens his eyes, but sees not the faces about 
him, only the Face lost in the mist but engraved upon 
his memory for all time. The star-crown still glows 
for him, the deep eyes still burn before him, the regal 
Head is present to his spiritual vision. He looks into the 
faces of those about him, but still beholding one Face, 
whispers : 

“I have seen, I still see, the Christ.” 

“Fie wanders,” Father Henry remarks to the physi- 
cian. 

The priest hears, and faintly smiles as he listens to 
the monotone of the waves. 


Revelations and Resolves. 85 


XII. 

REVELATIONS AND RESOLVES. 


High thanks I owe to you. .. .who carry out the world for 
me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all 
my thoughts. . . .A man who stands united with his thought 
conceives magnificently of himself. — Emerson. 

One evening in middle August Victor Devereux 
guided the little yacht across to the island for the last 
time. He was going, through the intervention and 
influence of Vancourt, to Paris. Going with his violin 
and his aspirations, and that which had become the 
mainspring of all his desires and strivings, his love for 
Helen Trescott. 

It was a hushed night. The broad, crimson belt in 
the West had narrowed to a ribbon of pink. The ten- 
der young moon cast pale shadows on the deck of the 
tiny craft. 

Brave in hope, but immeasurably saddened by the 
thought of parting from her who colored all his 
dreams, Victor forgot the shyness which in the white 
light of day had rendered him almost entirely silent 
in the presence of his loved one, and talked like a man. 

Miss Trescott, throwing, as was her wont, all her 
heart into the thing of the moment, was wondering, 
anticipating, dreaming with him. 


86 


A Grain of Madness. 


To-night, with the hour and his fresh outlook giving 
him ease and a command of language of which she had 
not deemed him capable, and with his possible future 
before her vision, she saw him in a new light, and en- 
tered into real sympathy with him. 

The hour for the beginning of a new friendship had 
struck. What is it that after months, perhaps years, 
of unrecognized spiritual relation, flashes into con- 
sciousness of unmistakable sympathy between two 
souls? To Helen Trescott Victor Devereux had 
hitherto been merely the silent, serving lad who had 
met her convenience. To-night her heart reached past 
all forgetfulness and indifference, and claimed him for 
her friend. 

She had never heard him play. She had imagined 
that his performance would not differ materially from 
that of any amateur player, and had thought that it 
would not be pleasant to listen to it affer the masterful 
productions of his uncle ; and he had been too delicate 
to force his talent upon her notice. 

‘'You will let me know of your progress?’’ she said 
in her earnest way. ‘T shall be so glad to hear how 
you are getting on.” 

‘T may write to you? And you will answer? You 
will really like to hear of my movements and my 
work ?” 

The voice of the lad was trembling with gladness. 

“Certainly,” was the answer. “Why should I not 
care? Will it be long before you can play before 
audiences, I wonder ? I have never heard the sound of 
your violin, you know.” 


Revelations and Resolves. 87 

you hear it now?'’ said the lad eagerly. “I 
have it here. Will you allow me to play, just once, 
for you alone?" 

She assented, wishing a little that he had not asked 
this. Imperfect notes would but poorly accord with the 
tenderness of the evening and the sweet beginning of 
friendship. 

The lad lifted the instrument from its case and 
brought it to his shoulder. The yacht hardly moved, 
and the sea softly caressed its sides. The moo'Ulight 
fell on the water and the sails, and lay in a silver square 
between the two occupants of the boat. 

The musician drew his bow across the strings, and 
forgot all material things. The intensity of love was 
in his soul, the pathos of parting sobbing itself out in 
his swift touches, the madness of passion burning itself 
into fierce strains under his fingers. He was alone with 
her who made the sea grand, the moonlight tender. 
For him no one lived in all the universe but the 
woman to whom he poured out his heart in sound. 

His listener sat in an enraptured trance. This the 
amateur whose performance she had dreaded ! This 
the learner of the sea-washed wilderness! This the 
lad who had seemed but a part of the boat which 
served her convenience! She thought of Sir Launfal 
who had carelessly tossed an alms to the Christ, and a 
great wave of shame and repentance came over her 
as though her unconsciousness and ignorance had been 
crimes. Could it be human fingers and a human heart 
and brain which produced those sounds? Did not a 
million lovers, dead with their love untold, voice their 


88 


A Grain of Madness. 


too-long silenced passion in those strains? Did not a 
myriad plead of heart yearnings too long unlistened to, 
in those chords? Pathos had deepened into trag- 
edy, love wailed itself into one intense chord in 
those sounds. A man with a violin? It was the 
spirit of Music, touching and controlling the winds, 
and no human being and man-made instrument. It 
was burning fire, swift moving light. The world! 
There was no world. It was all a stretch of waves, a 
brooding of moonlight, a universe of sound. She sat 
like one bound with chains, and half swooned with the 
force of her emotions. At length she touched the mu- 
sician on the arm, and bade him stop. Her head sank 
on her hands, and a shiver passed over her as though 
she were deathly cold. 

The lad put his violin aside, and touched her hand. 

'Tt has told my story,’’ he said. ''Do you think that 
if in the future you should hear me play and know not 
the name of the player, that you would recognize the 
touch ?” 

"Could more than one mortal ever play like that?” 
was the answer. "You are inspired, or rather you are 
music itself breathing out its life. Study I If you must 
study to play the birds should study to sing, the river 
to flow. Go, and conquer the world. You will be the 
Caesar of the musical sphere, the Alexander of the 
realm of sounds.” 

The word had been spoken, and become life. 

The world might grant him its endorsement; in the 
realm of music he might gain an honored and honor- 
able place ; but never could critic or patron truly claim 


Revelations and Resolves. 


89 


that he had decided anything, conferred anything. The 
violinist had received his kingdom, and the hand of 
an unknown girl had crowned him. She who was his 
world approved of him. Henceforth there was nothing 
he would fear. 

Vancourt had watched the yacht put out to sea. He 
had bidden young Devereux Godspeed, and had 
turned with a half guilty feeling away from the thanks 
which the lad's earnestness had made broken and dis- 
connected. He was glad the boy was going, and in a 
measure despised himself for his gladness, for he knew 
that it was not wholly caused by the thought that 
a heart-longing might be met, genius given its 
way. Before that day when a hatefully sweet knowl- 
edge had come to him he had decided and promised 
that the lad whom he declared to Pierre Devereux must 
be the reincarnated Orpheus or the river god Pan, 
should be sent to Paris. Had this thought come after 
that hour when the lightning-like grief and quickly 
recognized disaster had descended upon the two artists, 
it is doubtful if it would have been carried to fulfill- 
ment. Vancourt was honorable in every fiber of his 
being, and after that day he would probably have mis- 
trusted his own motives too much to have acted upon 
them. He did not feel himself wholly honorable now, 
as he paced the shore and watched the slowly moving 
yacht. 

The determination to conquer and banish that which 
lowered him in his own eyes and unfitted him for the 
loyal carrying out of that whereunto he had set him- 
self was of no avail. A mighty passion had laid hold 


90 


A Grain of Madness. 


of him with a grip that knew no loosening, obeyed no 
demands. 

If young Devereux succeeded — and he must succeed 
if the world had any soul to be touched — he would soon 
be famous, would soon place himself in a position to 
marry. How the man wandering up and down the 
shore, twisting his red beard, hated himself for the pain 
this thought brought. What if the boy did marry, and 
married — her? Any man was welcome to that. Ah, 
but he knew with a jealous knowledge that no man 
would be welcome to do so, knew that the certainty that 
another held the right which he so steadily and strongly 
refused to win for himself would be unutterable tor- 
ture ; and the knowledge, like the thought, was a hated 
torment. He thrust this phase of the subject sternly 
by, hurling it aside as one would hurl a firebrand from 
him only to feel its hot breath still. 

But the artist knew there would be another regret, 
a manly and noble regret, in his heart should his pupil 
become, for years at least, the wife of any man. He 
remembered all the reasonings which he had employed 
in speaking to Father Alpheus of those who would ac- 
complish great things. In the very warp and woof 
of his nature was woven a belief in the things he had 
then uttered, and now a new thought presented itself 
to his mind. Had no hint of the lad’s love been given 
him would he have scrupled to try to save this gifted 
one from the stultification which marriage would be 
sure to bring? She was an artist, not a dauber; a 
creator, not an imitator. This feeling of Victor’s was 
a boy’s love, and in the capitals of Europe would prob- 


Revelations and Resolves. 91 

ably evaporate more rapidly that it had been formed. 
Even if it never evaporated, should he, her teacher and 
the servant of Art, consent to its standing as a barrier 
to greatness and completeness? There were plenty of 
maidens to console disappointed lovers, myriads of 
women unstamped and uninspired by genius. Let these 
be the keepers of homes, the mothers of children. Let 
those of common fiber do the world’s common things, 
but permit not the hand whose power was a command 
to turn aside to perform trifling duties. 

His resolve was taken. One more should be added 
to the ranks of those who turned not from the service 
of the divine Mistress to find diversion in common 
ways. From utterly different directions and motives 
he and the priest had arrived at the same conclusion 
and desire. 

In Art Helen Trescott should find her happiness, 
her satisfaction. She should, as he had once said she 
might, '‘utterly lose her soul in Art, and find it in Art.” 
Would she prove worthy to abide in the Holy of 
Holies? Would she step beside him along the way of 
greatness which was also, according to the world’s 
thought, the way of self denial ? He hoped so; he be- 
lieved so. He would at least put her to the test. No 
boy’s love, no man’s passion, least of all his own, 
should shackle her freedom, hold her genius in chains. 
He would be her friend indeed, and the friend of Art. 
As he had renounced the thought of her love so should 
she renounce, or better, never harbor, any possible 
thought of that which would make her less than the 
artist. The laurel which she might win should not 


92 


A Grain of Madness. 


wither unworn, the possible honors remain unwon, un- 
deserved. In this time of resolution he raised his eyes 
as he had done in that time of his severest torment, 
and his tone was full and steady as he said : 

'Tor myself I have sworn unswerving allegiance to 
thee, my Mistress. For her I now swear it if it be pos- 
sible to bring it to thee. The hordes who dabble and 
pretend shall not count her among themselves. 
Heaven has ordained her for, and the signet of power 
has sealed her unto the elect. She must obey the soul’s 
high behest, and barter not her precious heritage.” 

The ripples still kissed the pebbles, a soft shimmer 
lay on the water. The young moon was sinking 
toward the horizon. 

The artist turned toward his farmhouse home, com- 
forted by his freshly generated resolution. 


The Ebbing Tide. 


93 


XIII. 

THE EBBING TIDE. 

Who thinks, at night, that morn will ever be? 

Who knows, 'far out upon the central sea, 

That anywhere is land? and yet a shore 
Has set behind us, and will rise before. 

— Bayard Taylor. 

The package which Helen Trescott put into the 
hands of Father Alpheus on her return from the West 
contained little save two written papers. In one of 
these, a letter to himself, the priest read : 

‘T feel a conviction that I shall not remain here, and 
I prepare to go. I shall leave no will, and the proper- 
ty will, of course, revert to the child.'’ 

Then followed an account of the scene at the death- 
bed of Robert Trescott, and a repetition of the dying 
man's words concerning his disinherited cousin, Archi- 
bald Trescott. 

‘Tf it should ever come to your knowledge," the let- 
ter went on, '‘that wife or child of Archie Trescott 
lives, you will, I know, help Helen to do that which is 
just. By moral right the bulk of the Trescott property 
belonged to this discarded son, and now belongs to his 
possible wife or offspring. Let us meet in the Here- 
after — O my friend, we must, in justice to ourselves, 


94 


A Grain of Madness. 


since life holds so little for us here, believe in a here- 
after — let us meet there knowing that no one was 
robbed by us or ours of aught that was morally his. 
No matter what the cost may be, I insist that Robert 
Trescott’s last wish be met, if possible. 

‘'I have instructed my daughter to call upon you, 
as my friend and hers, for advice and counsel. God 
knows whether it will ever be necessary or well to tell 
her all. I pray that she may not marry. She seems to 
look forward to nothing save devotion to Art. Will 
heaven be just enough — for who shall say that suffer- 
ing should come to her for that which was done before 
her birth? — to bind her soul to that which shall save 
her joy alive and keep her heart from torment? In 
this wise may come compensation, healing, adjust- 
ment. 

‘'I leave for you a paper to be given to Helen in case 
of her contemplated marriage, telling the whole 
truth about her parentage. Should your death seem 
near before this possible marriage, place the paper in 
safe hands for her. She is never to see it unless she 
is about to become a wife, or in the face of some con- 
tingency which I cannot foresee. In case of need per- 
haps you will prefer yourself to tell her the truth. 

''I enclose her photograph, and a ring you once 
wore, which has since lain in a drawer with a dead 
flower. Do you remember those rare blossoms which 
we found on that night? I need not ask. You will 
never forget. The thought has grown sure in my mind 
that not in my life, but by my death shall come to you 
and to me the things we need. If it be true that unto 


95 


The Ebbing Tide. 

released spirits it is given to be aught to those they 
love on earth, you shall not be without my ministration. 
I have a strange fancy about those flowers. They were 
the blossoms of innocence. We never found them 
after we sinned. I searched long and faithfully, but 
missed them utterly after that disastrous night. The 
perfume was unlike anything we had ever known. If 
it be permitted I will make that perfume to you the 
sign and assurance of my presence. In the hour when 
you need help, when you are weak and tempted and 
desolate, it shall bring to your remembrance another 
hour when weakness was two lives’ undoing, and cause 
you to be strong. If the perfume come to you, know 
that I am near. You shall work and walk no more 
alone if my prayer to be with you be granted. Be 
comforted, and look for the sign/' 

The priest put the box aside and leaned his head on 
his hands. 

Remember that night ! The light and twilight made 
by the moon and the trees, the wind-tossed shrubs, the 
tufts of waving ferns, the blowing boughs, the wide 
swathes of silver on the meadow grass below, the mar- 
velously beautiful flowers opening their full bloom to 
the night, and sending their intoxicating scent into the 
dusky hour of sweet pain and appalling knowledge! 

Many years were between that night and this. 
Death had stilled the burning heart and chilled the 
glowing lips of his then companion, and his priest’s 
robe was now heavy and somber about him, but there 
was a drawer of his desk that he dared not open; 
a drawer in which lay a single dead flower which the 


96 


A Grain of Madness. 


years had no more robbed of its fragrance than they 
had robbed his soul of the remembrance of that hour 
when its perfume first appealed to his senses. 

How distinct had become to him the difference be- 
tween passion and love, the one like the seething light- 
ning bolt unloosed but to destruction and death, the 
other like the sun, hoarding warmth that it may radiate 
it unto life and power and uplifting! With what cer- 
tainty had he proved that of his ill as well as of his 
well doing one must reap sixty or a hundredfold ! A 
moment of fierce delight, years of misery ! An hour of 
unholy indulgence, a double decade of remorse! Oh, 
infamous falsehood, daily repeated, by which the 
devastating thing passion is christened Love ! 

It was said that Father Alpheus was much changed 
by his illness, but those who declared him so could not 
put their feelings concerning him into words. His 
face, always pale, was whiter now, and in it was the 
meditative, expectant look of one who heeds but little 
the things about him, but listens, and waits in alert 
dreaminess for signal or sign. Neither to their minds 
nor to his own did it tangibly occur that to him had 
arrived one of those crises which come when the tide 
of circumstances has drifted in a certain direction to its 
full limit. His life-pendulum had swung to its farthest 
possible point. The return swing was inevitable. 

The manner of the priest was less austere than of 
old, and a new gentleness was in his speech. People 
came more readily to him for counsel, more freely laid 
before him their doubts and fears. Into his discourses 


The Ebbing Tide. 97 

there crept the hesitating note of one who would learn 
with his people rather than be unto them a law. 

The lonely man in his somber dress, so unlike the 
men about him, had always possessed a peculiar fas- 
cination for the child. Jetsam, who, more silent than 
her brother, was possessed of a mind of greater fas- 
tidiousness and more deeply studious propensities. 
She wondered that one who owned and read so many 
big, wise-looking books, and looked so reserved and 
learned, should linger among those whom Herr Less- 
ing designated as a lot of ignoramuses. 

Jetsam was accounted a strange child, and was 
looked upon merely as her unlikeness to other children 
which caused her to go on long walks with the priest, 
and to linger in and about his house. She was a lonely 
little being. She did not, like Flotsam, make friends 
readily, but lived a brooding, uncompanioned life of 
unsprightly fancies and unchildlike reasonings. One 
day when a high wind had blown the priest’s hat far 
from him she had secured it and brought it to its 
owner, who, after thanking her, had spoken so kindly 
to her — fancying something in the look of her dark 
eyes was akin to his thought — that she had remained 
by his side all through his walk. Thus was begun 
an acquaintance which grew into a friendship between 
two whose lives, apparently far apart, really touched at 
several points. The child came and went. The priest 
grew to expect her, and to be sorry when she stayed 
away. 

The two did not talk much together, but the priest 
was sometimes surprised by the girl’s questions. 


98 


A Grain of Madness. 


started on many a new train of thought by her reason- 
ings, and felt more companioned by her than by many 
of thrice her years with whom he had been thrown in 
contact. More than once he found himself repeating 
the words heard in the land of shadows, ''A little child 
shall lead thee.’’ 

Father Alpheus was a haunted man. In the morn- 
ing sunlight, amidst the noon brightness, among the 
shadows of evening, in the mists of the valley, in the 
foam of the waves, he saw a Face; the Face of the full 
brow and breeze-tossed hair, of the blue-veined temples 
and tenderly masterful lips ; of the eyes with the smile 
of God within them ; the Face above which glowed and 
glimmered in many-hued radiance the crown of stars. 
The eyes, with their color of the deep places of the sea, 
look into his with their soul-entrancing glance, and he 
forgets in his rapture to be lonely, and ceases to be 
doubtful. The words which came to him in that land of 
grayness and of glory return in mosaics of broken 
thought, supplemented by thoughts and questions of 
his own. 

''The Comforter shall come. Not always in the same 
way perhaps. The old thought was different, but why 
necessarily truer? Is it in this form He shall come 
to me? 'I will abide with thee.’ Is it in this wise, O 
Lord, that thou wilt abide ? Why have I, a sinful man, 
been singled out to behold Him before whom angles 
and archangels veil their faces? I have questioned, 
and sinned, but, O Lord, thou knowest how the dagger 
of doubt has lacerated, how the sword of sin has slain. 
Abide indeed, and let me learn through that which 


The Ebbing Tide. 99 

comes from beholding thy countenance the way of 
righteousness and of peace ! 

‘'Art must be her life, her companion, her all. An- 
other prays for it; another whose living wish and dy- 
ing desire add a thousandfold to my determination.^’ 

Thus spoke the priest when the two letters which 
had been brought to him by Helen Trescott had been 
several times read, and put carefully away. The hid- 
den books, books which had been studied at night, 
books which would have been regarded by his simple 
people as volumes of dire iniquity, were again scanned 
to see if any new interpretation or fresh information 
might thus be gained. 

In the summer night, with the curtains drawn be- 
fore the unclosed windows, the priest sits alone with 
the picture of Helen Trescott before him, his mind 
going out to its original in a concentrated volume. 
He looks intently at the photographed countenance, and 
although he does not for an instant lose its outline or 
expression, another Face glows behind it, comes nearer, 
mingles with it, and the intense thought-current goes 
out charged with the impress of that countenance of 
beauty and of power as well as with the wish of the 
sender. A new thought, which arrests the old and 
grows into an intense, burning desire, comes to the 
priest. Could she be made to see this Face? Made to 
see it so clearly that she could paint it ? Ah, God ! Did 
ever brush lend itself to such a work? Did ever in- 
spiration picture to the mind aught which could for a 
moment rival this heavenly vision? Who could paint 
this Face and go back to the doing of common things, 
or be allowed to remain in ordinary standing? 

LofC. 


lOO 


A Grain of Madness, 


The priest stretches out his hands in an agony of en- 
treaty. 

‘‘For power to send my thought with the strength of 
the thunderbolt, with the certainty of the lightning!’’ 
he cries. “Behold I I would give her sure fame, and 
unto the world this great gift of beauty. Oh for the 
will that brooks no denial !” 

He feels stealing into his every nerve resistless 
strength. A current as from a fully charged battery 
fills his veins. There is no swerving of thought, no 
realization of anything in the world. The task shall be 
accomplished, the Face engraved upon her memory, 
painted by her hand I 

The oil in the lamp fails, and the light goes out. 
The priest does not heed the darkness. He does not 
know how long he has sat thus when the unfastened 
door opens, letting a bar of moonlight fall on the un- 
carpeted floor. 

“They only bloom in the night,” says a voice near 
him, and all around him, filling every corner of the 
place, floats an odor which renders the atmosphere 
heavy in a moment, and turns the thoughts of the priest 
from their new channel to a vision of the past, and a 
promise written by a hand now dead. “/ will make 
that perfume to you the sign and assurance of my 
spirit presence. Be comforted, and look for the sign.^' 

The priest gazes around him, and remembers. 

“Welcome!” he says gratefully. 

He stretches out his hands, and a child with dark 
face and grave, brooding eyes, steals softly to his side, 
and fills them with strange blossoms with pink petals 
and hearts of purple hue. 


More Stately Mansions. 


101 


XIV. 

MORE STATELY MANSIONS. 

Oh, God! I cannot help it, but at times 
They seem to me too narrow all the faiths 
Of this grown world of ours, whose baby eye 
Saw them sufficient. — Tennyson. 

'‘Father Alpheus, do you believe he would do it?^’ 
questioned Jetsam, looking with intent, troubled eyes 
into the face of the priest. 

A small copy of Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment, 
executed by fingers clever at reproduction, was before 
the child, and she had asked for, and had been listen- 
ing to its story. She had shown a deep interest in 
every detail of the painted scene, and at its close there 
is a long pause. 

The brooding eyes remain fastened on the canvas. 
The agonized countenances of the damned blanche the 
face of the gazer, the terribleness of the scene appals 
her. In her heart there springs up a strong protest, 
a hot disbelief takes possession of her tender soul. Her 
troubled eyes are misty with emotion as she asks : 

"Do you believe he would do it ?” 

"That who would do what, child ?” asked the priest, 
whose mind has wandered to other things. 


102 


A Grain of Madness. 


‘'The Christ/' was the slow reply. “You see it 
wouldn't do any good for them to be punished forever. 
They would never get out of hell to do any good, even 
if they were real sorry. Wouldn't it be a good deal 
better if he would forgive them, and make them happy, 
and let them begin again? Don't you suppose they 
were ever so unhappy, and that's why they were so 
wicked? The folks I know are so much better when 
they don't feel bad about anything. Why, if grandpa 
wouldn't forgive me when I've been naughty to him 
or to brother, and am sorry, I think I should hate 
him, and I shouldn't want to be good any more, and 
then, of course, I should grow worse all the time till I 
was as bad as I could be, shouldn't I ? And what good 
would it do grandpa or brother if I was punished al- 
ways? 

“Why, Father Alpheus, grandpa wouldn't do it, and 
of course, Christ wouldn't. If he would he don't be- 
have a bit as my Sunday-school teacher says he wants 
us to, and I don't think it would be fair of him not to, 
do you ? Sometimes when I've been bad grandpa says 
he’d rather I'd forget about being naughty and think 
about being good, for folks are best when they're hap- 
piest, and I think God agrees with grandpa, don't 
you ?" 

The priest looked at the child in silence. In what 
manner could he answer her? Should he tell her that 
her disbelief was sin? Should he bid her believe that 
the Christ who counseled mercy and enjoined forgive- 
ness showed not the one and gave not the other ? 

For a time longer than he cared to name there 


More Stately Mansions. 103 

had been burning in his own heart, clamoring in his 
own brain, questions similar to those of the child. 
How should he, whose creed declared for everlasting 
punishment, eternal penance, answer the questions of 
this little one without shocking her or dishonoring his 
accepted doctrine? 

Jetsam waited through the silence, her face as 
troubled as that of the priest. 

''You do not believe he would do it?’’ she persisted 
at length. 

"Lord forgive me if I am untrue,” said the priest 
with the desperation of a belief that yet feels itself dis- 
loyalty. "but I do not believe he would do it! He 
could not do it. Believe in a just God, child, a God of 
love who could not do it. Go, now, but come again 
soon. I would be alone.” 

Without a word the child left the room, but there 
was a look of relief on her dark face, a soft light in her 
brooding eyes. 

Father Alpheus was alone. Before his mind stalked 
questions, doubts, denials, the very existence of which 
he knew would be regarded as heresy by the intelli- 
gence to which he had subscribed, and which, by his 
calling and teaching, he admitted as his guide. 

For centuries those whom he was bound to consider 
learned and wise had brought their knowledge and 
their erudition to prove the love and wisdom of a God 
whose punishments have no end. All through the ages 
the justice of life-long penance had been taught by 
the order whose robe he wore, whose creed he preached 
to his people. He knew that for centuries theology had 


104 


A Grain of Madness. 


sent its arrows of ecclesiasticism so thickly into the air 
that the atmosphere of free thought and simple belief 
had been stifled by them. He realized that the dark 
picture of eternal punishment instituted by a God 
whom human reason had exhausted itself in trying to 
make merciful as well as just, had been drawn by mas- 
ter hands, shaded by skilful intellects, and received by 
philosophical intelligences as an undying masterpiece 
whose legitimacy could never be disputed. 

Now the hand of a child had touched this struc- 
ture whose foundations were ecclesiastical dogmas, its 
walls the beliefs of men, and had rocked it to its base. 
A child’s breath had blown aside the sophistries which 
mystified the mind and confused the reason, and there 
stood in all its nakedness, its simple severity, its unde- 
niableness, the uselessness and the injustice of ever- 
lasting punishment ; aye, more, of long continued pen- 
ance. Of what use was that which had served its pur- 
pose? When by the fire of suffering the dross was 
burned away, when the heart was chastened and made 
repentant by the flames of conscience, of what further 
value was the purging heat? Could God be a parent 
of love in this world and a judge of insatiable ven- 
geance in the next? Would he add hate to sin, and 
turn his creatures from him forever? What careful 
owner of a soiled garment after cleansing it remem- 
bered that it was not always clean? And if God 
cleansed and forgot, must man choose to remember 
and suffer? Would it not, indeed, be treason against 
the generosity which would blot out if one persisted in 
doing penance for that which had disappeared? 


More Stately Mansions. 105 

The mind of the thinker went back to the Christ who 
walked and talked in sunlit spaces under the warm 
skies of the East. Surely he taught that sin must 
bring suffering, but where did he teach that sin was not 
its own punishment in its effects upon the mind and 
heart, and no specific, condign thing dealt out at the 
end of the earth-life, or enjoined during the years when 
the mortal has not put on immortality? How could a 
Christ who was truth incarnate and sincerity enfleshed 
condemn infinitely for finite sins, and grant no oppor- 
tunity for return to the ways of righteousness though 
the heart might break, and the soul bow itself to the 
earth in repentance, and still talk of tenderness which 
.should forgive not seven times, but seventy times 
seven? Surely, one must dishonor Jesus of Nazareth if 
he would credit the theologians. 

And then in the mind of the priest a new thought 
was born. A life-long sorrow upon earth does not 
honor God. Nothing honors God which is not uplifting. 
Sorrow is uplifting only as the root from which may 
spring fresh spiritual life. Christ came that man might 
have life, and have it more abundant. Continued sor- 
row, eternal penance are negation, or that from which 
grows unrighteousness. It is not man’s duty to remain 
in the valley of humiliation though sins black as mid- 
night and foul as hell may have dragged him there, but 
to rise and walk towards the light. Is not man dis- 
honoring God when he refuses the joy which recreates, 
and lives in the sorrow which destroys ? Who shall feel 
himself honored when his offer of that which is of 
royal benefit is refused for that which is of constant 
disintegration ? 


io6 A Grain of Madness. 

''Continued penance is carnal. Happiness is holi- 
ness,'' 

The priest speaks the words aloud, and the sound 
seems to fill all the air of the room. He looks about 
him in half protest at the declaration which he yet feels 
to be true. 

He knows that he is guilty of that which he himself 
a year before would have condemned as heresy. He 
realizes what will be the decision of those by whose sys- 
tem and decrees he has sworn to abide. He is aware 
that from the richly robed Pope in the Vatican, from 
crimson-garbed cardinals, from gray-gowned friars, 
from sable-robed priests, from pale-browed nuns, 
from white-lipped sisters of mercy, from penance ema- 
ciated ascetics of his own order would come a loud- 
voiced denial of his newly born creed. That from sol- 
emn-visaged, somber-gowned preachers, teachers, and 
followers of those who believed not in the hierarchy 
which ordained him priest, but who spread and empha- 
sized a doctrine which was in essence the same, would 
issue an appalled protest at his suddenly conceived 
conviction. He remembers that down through the 
ages has come the belief that the greatest happiness 
must come through the most long-enduring pain. But 
there alone with the silence and his own soul, the 
priest comes face to face with the truth and is freed 
from mental and spiritual thraldom. 

"Continued penance is carnal. Happiness is holi- 
ness," 

With unafraid conviction he repeats the words. 

Against the creed of Pope and cardinal and priest, 


More Stately Mansions. 107 

against the authority of clerical apologists and dogmat- 
ists, arose in ghastly phalanx the ranks of those who 
have sinned through unhappiness, been made mad 
through disaster. 

Under cover of each night were fleeing those who, 
in the desperation of their own tortured lives had taken 
other lives. He tried to recall the names of the happy 
people who had been murderers, and found not one 
name coming to his memory. Secluded as was his life 
he had listened many times while through the grated 
lattice had come tales of spotless virtue sold to those 
whose gold would buy the bread which honesty had 
failed to win. His endeavor to remember a single in- 
stance where happiness had exchanged a life of purity 
for one of vice was fruitless. He called to mind hard, 
coarsened faces of cities in which he had lived and 
visited where hunger had reared its head and all the 
graces which refine, the charms which stimulate, had 
been denied. The souls of those dwellers in the byways 
of neglect had been drugged with unhappiness, and 
were dead in trespasses and sin. 

Floating in upon many tides were myriads who 
had plunged beneath the waves as their only refuge 
from despair. Did their histories, when revealed, show 
that which would have kept them in touch with the 
magnetic currents of life, the wells of joy from which 
to have drunk would have been life? The reply was 
inevitable. 

Found by thousands every year, lying in rooms into 
which it was no one's business or pleasure to enter with 
ministration, were those with tightly grasped vials. 


io8 


A Grain of Madness. 


their contents furnished with means insufficient for 
food, but sufficient for death, whom desperation had 
destroyed. 

On the streets of cities, holding up tiny hands for the 
dole of the beggar, were numberless little ones, with 
cunning, unchildish faces, driven from their homes to 
become infant mendicants by those whose narrow and 
joyless existence had made all modes of robbery seem 
legitimate. Could he recall any joyous child with the 
look and manner of these tiny supplicants ? Did he re- 
member any happy parents who had sent forth these 
unnatural messengers ? Not one ! 

The full vessel could hold no more. In hearts 
brimmed with contentment, shot through with joy, 
vibrant with strong currents of hopeful purpose, the 
madness which is the mother of sin, the despair which 
is the parent of crime, finds no room for germination. 
It was when the dwelling was swept and garnished, 
empty of rich meanings and glorious purpose, that the 
seven devils entered, and made the last state of the dis- 
mantled soul worse than the first. Truly, sin was the 
curse and the unbearable weight of life, and the great 
generator of sin was misery. 

He realized that unholiness grew as naturally from 
unhappiness as the grain of wheat from the wheat 
kernel. 

More sorrow for the saving of the world? More 
penance, and fasting, and humiliation? Great God, 
no! but a full-volumed wave of happiness and help 
which should sweep before it the horrors of daily tor- 
ment and hourly torture, the dull negation of misery 


More Stately Mansions. 109 

from which springs the positive activity of crime, as 
the flowing tide bears the seaweed on its bosom, as the 
tornado forces before it the trees of the forest, the 
grass of the plain ! 

He thought of his own life. In the frenzy of a mo- 
ment, the passion of an hour, he had committed a 
crime. Bitterly and with all his soul had he repented. 
By years of isolation and of penance he had endeavored 
to atone for that crime, and thus to honor God. Had 
he honored God? Was God truly honored by a man, 
having repented unto righteousness, remaining, after 
his purging, in the valley of humiliation where the 
heart may rust itself into disbelief, the brain turn itself 
to insanity ? He had prostituted his intelligence, wasted 
his knowledge, caused his heart to die in inaction. To 
what end? Did not man sin against God by sinning 
against himself? Aye, was not this the only way in 
which a man could injure God? 

He had fostered negation, added to the volume of 
misery which curses the world, and binds it to the 
wheel of discontent and despair. In trying to atone 
for sin he has sinned. 

One conviction stands out clearly and not to be dis- 
sipated. Life long penance is sin; enduring grief is 
wickedness. Happiness is holiness, and from it spring 
the holy things which make for life. For him the law 
of life has been rewritten, the message of God retrans- 
lated. Repentance is a means, not an end. The re- 
demption of man is with himself through the attributes 
which God has given him. Life, not negation, is the 
saving force; the ending of sorrow is the beginning 


I lO 


A Grain of Madness. 


of joy which worketh unto righteousness, Man must 
be righteous unto himself j and thereby save himself 
by the God within him. 

''1 have been blind in my folly, and sinful for want 
of knowledge,” exclaimed the thinker in the stillness. 
‘'I have harnessed the force which should have gone 
forth to work the work of redemption. Now let the 
red blood course quickly through my veins, and the 
currents of my being set towards that which makes 
for the joy that is righteousness!” 

The moon comes out from behind a cloud and rests 
in a shimmer of silver upon the floor. A sudden 
breeze floats in at the window and stirs with a gentle 
sound the dead leaves and blossoms which a child has 
left behind in the fireless grate. Round about the man 
with his new thoughts and fresh beliefs hovers a fra- 
grance which makes him lift his eyes with a glad look 
of welcome within them, and hold out to the perfume- 
scented air hands which though they grasp nothing do 
not feel empty. 


Life’s Resetting. 


Ill 


XV. 


life's resetting. 

I will not choose what many men desire, 

Because I will not jump with common spirits, 

And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. 

— Shakespeare. 

Darkness was in the glens and twilight on the hills. 
Night birds amid forest shadows .were answering each 
others' cry. The evening star was growing less pale. 
The young moon, a burnished crescent, hung lonely 
and beautiful in the wide sky spaces of the West. The 
sound of a tumbling and moaning sea came through 
the stillness of the hour of falling dew. 

The sketching tools were gathered together, and 
rested on the ground. The two artists remained on the 
crest of the hill, from which they had watched the sun 
set, Vancourt bolt upright, his hands deep in the pock- 
ets of his gray trousers. Miss Trescott leaning against 
a tree, her fingers tightly interlacing each other. 

The girl raised her shaded eyes to the dim face of 
her companion, and asked a question. ^Wou can give 
me an answer to-night," she had said. 

“You have asked that I would be your teacher in 
Rome," Vancourt replied. “You have declared that 


I 12 


A Grain of Madness. 


without my further instruction you could feel no cer- 
tainty about your progress, no surety about your fu- 
ture. I long ago made a rule which I had thought 
never to break, to receive absolutely no pupils. I have 
decided, on one condition, to make an exception in 
your favor ; a condition which would seem to the ordi- 
nary person so harsh, probably so needless, that only a 
fool would name it. It is because I do not consider 
you an ordinary person that I venture to put it before 
you. Remember, however, that I urge nothing, proffer 
no advice. Let your decision be unbiased by any word 
or thought of mine. You know my moods and man- 
ners. I have nothing of the world's suavity, know 
none of the meaningless phrases of the polite. I 
promise nothing of gentleness, and, as you have al- 
ready learned, I am not given to the slightest toleration. 
I would lay before you not only this condition, but all 
the feelings of my heart on the subject which most 
vitally concerns you, that if in future our lives should 
touch, there may be no shadow of misunderstanding 
between us." 

''Go on; speak quickly," cried his listener, in the 
earnest, impulsive way which was natural to her. 

Vancourt continued as though he had not heard her. 

"I would never consent to become the instructor of 
one whose foundations were not so deeply laid as to 
preclude any failure which might come because of his 
own acts, or failure to act. The brush of the artist 
who wields it under my direction must be, and remain 
to him, the one tool in the world. There must be no 
intermittent effort, no distracted attention. I will 


“3 


Life’s Resetting. 

teach no unconsecrated hand to do its half-best, no par- 
tially devoted soul to paint out its mutilated visions. 

'‘He who is not the slave of art and a lover of his 
chains, is not art’s true interpreter. The painter who 
feels not this bondage is free and impatient, untram- 
melled and weak. It is the whole current of one’s 
being flowing in a single stream which bears all before 
it. Man talks of mastering Art. He is not the truest 
artist, not the strongest painter, unless Art has mas- 
tered him. He is a pretender who talks of cultivating 
a taste for painting. The real artist can no more help 
painting than the sun can help shining, or the moon 
giving her light. He who by conscious effort gener- 
ates a taste for painting is a dauber; he has not the 
first essential of the artist. Pretenders who copy from 
other men are generated in hordes. Painters are born 
one in a century. Attempt to tell no story with your 
brush unless the tale is burning itself into form, de- 
manding itself into utterance, kindling itself into 
shape, and you have only to obey, and paint. Do not 
go to Rome with any half desire which is the pale 
makeshift of the power which will not be baffled, the 
conception which demands shape, the longing which 
must be appeased in accomplishment. If concentration 
is not joy, and the giving of all the gaining of all which 
your heart holds most dear, say no more of Rome. 
There are already triflers and idlers enough within her 
borders.” 

'T follow and understand you,” cried the listener in 
an eager tone. "But the condition! Pray name the 
condition.” 


1 1 4 A Grain of Madness. 

The hands of the artist, withdrawn from his pockets, 
were fiercely twisting his red beard. The look on his 
face, which she could not see, was that of one who is 
about to speak words which mean sure success or cer- 
tain ruin for himself. His voice was a little harder 
and colder than usual as he said : 

'‘Give me your solemn promise that for ten years you 
will fill your time, your heart, your mind exclusively 
with Art; that no distractions of love or lovers shall 
disturb you ; that you will not accept from any man 
the least attention which might suggest marriage, or 
encourage love making; that at the end of the ten 
years you will marry no one but a painter whose work 
has been pronounced by competent judges superior to 
your own. That no frivolities of any kind shall come 
between you and your work — promise me this as one 
promises who means to keep his word, and I will be- 
come your teacher as long as you stand in need of my 
instructions.’’ 

Miss Trescott looked at him in a puzzled way which 
the darkness made it impossible for him to note. Why 
did he talk so earnestly, so almost angrily of love and 
lovers? What hint had she ever given that these 
things interested her? Had love proved a foe to him 
that he spoke of it so bitterly ? 

She asked these questions of herself, and then of 
him. The reply came with the steadiness and readi- 
ness of words many times gone over in the mind, and 
whose meaning was branded into the consciousness. 

"Genius cannot be killed altogether,” said the cold 
voice, "but it can be muzzled and hampered, and its 


“5 


Life’s Resetting. 

most effective foe is love. The lover is never more 
than half the artist. His mind is drawn to sensuous 
delights, warped by feelings , which disintegrate and 
dissipate, by pleasures which enervate and weaken. 
He who does not find sufficient pleasure in Art is not 
worthy to be one of her votaries. He who would be 
great'' — repeating his favorite maxim — ‘‘must meet 
the conditions of greatness. If, when your judgment 
and taste are of no uncertain quality, when your touch 
is accurate and sure, when the years have given their 
practice and success its power ; if then, when you have 
wrought worthily, should one who has wrought if not 
more worthily, still with larger success, wed you, he 
would himself have reached a height from which he 
would look at your work with true appreciation, and 
expect not from one whose genius was so apparent the 
thoughts of the matron or the cares of the mother. He 
would not replace the sacred tools which so few may 
effectively handle by the common implements which 
multitudes may wield. It is the world's way to play 
at both Art and love, and to be sufficient in neither. If 
you prefer the world's way allow no influence of mine 
to interfere with your preference. I have given you 
my ' condition ; my only one. You will perhaps need 
time before you answer." 

Miss Trescott's reply was grave and decided : 

“Why should I require time to think of that which 
has been thought out a hundred times ? What you say 
of love sounds true enough, but no thought of love, or 
fear of its diversions, disturbs me. I have told you of 
the one great longing which possesses me ; the longing 


A Grain of Madness. 


1 16 

to paint out my soul. I have said that the woman that 
remains could make no sacrifice to Art, because all that 
she has would be gladly given. I have in no wise 
changed my mind. Why, then, should I require time ? 
I answer you here, now. / accept your conditions most 
willingly, I am grateful to you ; most grateful. Words 
cannot make you understand how glad I am. Let me 
become as nearly as I may all that your pupil should 
be. In no other way can I adequately thank you. Let 
us talk of Rome. How the thought of it thrills me! 
Can we go soon? And yet this place has become so 
dear 

‘'It is damp here,’’ was the reply, “and the yacht will 
be waiting. We can talk of Rome to-morrow.” 

Vancourt saw his companion to the boat, and stood 
watching the yacht till it was lost in the sea fog which 
was rising, and then began, with his old habit, to pace 
the sands. 

He had purposely waited till dusk to say the words 
which had come in answer to Miss Trescott’s request. 
He had not wished her to see his face while he spoke 
of the things which for many days had been filling his 
heart, burning in his brain. 

He had vowed to work out in no coward’s way a 
penance for his disloyalty. He would not flee from 
temptation, but face it, grapple with it, become stronger 
for the struggle. And the mistress should receive an- 
other jewel for her crown, one whose radiance was of 
first water, whose value should endure ; for he felt with 
strong conviction that never again, even for brief 
hours, would the frivolities and smallness of exist- 


Life’s Resetting. 1 1 7 

ence lay hold with any eifective grasp upon the young 
painter, that his dream, which until now he had never 
dared to believe might be realized, of a companion who 
should understand his aspirations, partake of his en- 
thusiasms, and equal him in consecration, would come 
true. 

With this he vowed to be content ; nay, rather, to re- 
joice in the knowledge. 

But as he paced the sands in the chilling dampness 
which he did not heed, he was amazed and angered at 
the sensation which his pupil’s reply had given him. 

Could he have dictated her answer he would not 
have changed one syllable, and yet had there been one 
sign that through the summer weeks she had begun 
to learn a lesson other than that of draughting 
and coloring, of gradations and values ; if by any hesi- 
tating word or inadvertent sentence she had betrayed 
that by the intuition which asks no time for its affirma- 
tions and no reasons for its conclusions, she had 
learned of, and in the slightest way had responded to, 
that tenderness which never showed itself in deed or 
word; he knew, had this been true, that never so fair 
and sweet a thing had summer brought to man as this 
summer had given to him. 

His heart ached for, starved without, that which he 
would in nowise allow himself to try to gain. 

Ten years. She would never know that the condi- 
tion was made as much to guard himself as her. Ten 
years in which to undream the dream which had come 
near to being his undoing, to wipe out weakness, to 
strangle passion, to atone by double devotion for his 


A Grain of Madness. 


1 18 

disastrous falling from grace. Ten years to break the 
meshes which bound him, and grow freer and stronger 
for the conflict. 

For her ten years of steady advancement, and then, 
perchance, if some one who had soared even above the 
heights which she had gained should love her and be 
loved again, to give her away as his friend and pupil — 

He became suddenly aware that the mist had per- 
meated his garments, making him shiver through and 
through, and that the heavily rolling waves had a 
sound which sent a lonely feeling to his very soul. 
He shook himself as though to repulse some torment- 
ing thing. 

''Always of her,’’ he muttered angrily. "I see no 
shapes for my canvas, dream no dreams which shall 
blossom into realities. Nothing apart from her has 
any power to hold my imagination, or fire my brain. 
But, "with a gleam of hope on the face which was 
lifted toward the mist-hidden sky,” passion is an 
ephemeral thing. On this one point poets and writers 
all agree. It burns itself down to ashes, and becomes a 
dead thing. It is friendship which endures, ennobles, 
strengthens. They all declare it. Ten years. In that 
time the lad will have become a man ; will have gained 
place and name, and what is a woman’s word against 
the demands of her heart ? But I say she will be true,” 
angrily, as though another had doubted her. "She will 
not falter or swerve, or do a dishonorable thing. She 
has entered the Temple of Art, her feet shod with san- 
dals of consecration, and wearing the garment of devo- 
tion. She will be true. I could swear it !” 


Life’s Resetting. 119 

The sea still tumbled and sighed, on the distant rocks 
the surf beat tumultuously. A dark cloud had risen, and 
thunder was heard. A flash of lightning lit up the sea 
and the sands, and, awakened from his reverie by its 
glow, the artist bethought himself of the time of night, 
and turned his footsteps homeward. 

The long, languorous days of summer had burned 
and waned themselves away. September crickets 
called with their rasping, desolate sound amid the 
grass of the shorn meadows. Such grain as grew on 
the rocky soil was being gathered in for the threshing. 
The early frosts were beginning to give the forests a 
foretaste of the glory which would ere long set them 
aglow. Soon the early Maine winter would put an 
end to outdoor sketching, and plans for the future must 
be made. 

Vancourt had never broached to Miss Trescott the 
subject of his desire and resolve concerning her future, 
but, as though to meet his wish and purpose, through 
all the late summer and the beginning of autumn her 
soul had turned with infinite longing toward the Old 
World, birthplace and home of Art, and when one 
day the older artist spoke of his determination to go 
to Rome immediately after leaving the Maine coast, 
she entreated him to remain her teacher there as he 
had been among the New England hills. 


120 


A Grain of Madness. 


XVI. 

THE STRESS OF NEW CONDITIONS. 

One of the grandest things in having rights is that, being 
your rights, you may give them up. — George Macdonald. 

As night shows where one moon is, 

A hand’s-breadth of pure light and bliss. 

So life’s night gives my lady birth 
And my eyes hold her! What is worth 
The rest of Heaven, the rest of earth? 

— Browning. 

A farmer boy was now employed to guide the yacht 
which bore Miss Trescott between the island and the 
mainland. 

The young artist, compassionate of his added loneli- 
ness, went often to sit with Victor Devereux’s uncle. 

The existence of Pierre Devereux showed forth with 
remarkable clearness the sharp contrasts which the 
years may set against each other. 

He who had once been accustomed to all the sen- 
suous delights of the world's gayest capitals, now lived 
his life in the tiny house, amid the stillness of that 
barren, New England island, with the sound of sea 
surges for companionship, the sight of drifting gulls 
for recreation. 


The Stress of New Conditions. 121 


Miss Trescott’s visits were the brightest spots in 
his somber days. 

Naturally the two talked much of Victor; of the 
news in his letters, his progress, and his prospects. 

'‘He is working, always working, with the world's 
applause in his thought," exclaimed Pierre Devereux. 
"He will succeed, and that largely." 

"I am ever working with one hope in my heart," 
had been the boy's written words ; words whose mean- 
ing had been entirely misinterpreted. 

One evening when Miss Trescott entered the 
Devereux cottage she noticed an unwonted air of ex- 
citement in the manner of its occupant. 

On the table beside him was an open box, around 
which lay several papers. 

When the visitor had received his greeting, and was 
seated, the musician said : 

"A surprising thing had come to my knowledge. 
My sister left some private papers in her desk which 
I have never looked at till two hours since. I had not 
supposed they possessed any special interest or im- 
portance save such as the fact of their belonging to her 
would naturally give them in my sight; and I have a 
horror of handling things which have been touched by 
people who are dead; but to-day in my restlessness I 
opened the box containing the papers, and read some 
of the letters which it held. I never knew till I did 
this the name of the man my sister married. One 
of the conditions imposed upon her and her lover was 
that neither should ever mention the former name 
of the husband, and that both should so far as possible 


1 22 


A Grain of Madness. 


forget that he ever bore any name save that of the 
noble house with which his marriage allied him. My 
sister was a loyal soul, and I was never at home, and 
so knew almost nothing of family matters. 

‘‘Look at this photograph and these letters, and tell 
me to what conclusion they lead you.’’ 

Miss Trescott took the faded picture in her hand, 
exclaiming the moment her eyes fell upon it : 

“How like Victor it is !” 

Beneath the photograph was written the name, 
Archibald Trescott; the name of one whose history 
the artist had one evening told to the musician. 

Host and visitor exchanged glances, and then Miss 
Trescott took up a letter, a passionate love-letter, 
through which she only partially glanced, feeling a 
double treachery in reading an epistle not meant for 
her perusal since both its writer and receiver were 
dead, but which she knew was indited by a man in 
ordinary standing and rank in life; one who had not 
been considered, did not consider himself, as altogether 
clean; one who held himself as in no sense worthy of 
the love of her whom he coveted, but who had, in the 
strength which her belief in him gave, abandoned un- 
righteous ways, and exultantly proclaimed love victor 
in the struggle for a soul. 

The letter was signed Archie Trescott. 

Other letters of a later date, addressed to the same 
person in the same hand, were signed Frangois 
Devereux, and in a postscript following the earliest 
signing of this name were the words : 

“How strange it seems that Archibald Trescott has 


The Stress of New Conditions, 123 

become Francois Devereux, but I have not made the 
former name one of which to be proud. There is no 
one to regret its loss, and the winning of yourself, 
my darling, is worth a sacrifice — if sacrifice it be — a 
million times greater. 

''We will never write or speak my old name again. 
A friend told me some time ago that one bearing it 
went down on a steamer bound from New York to 
Liverpool. We will suppose (as my family probably 
do if any of its members saw a list of the lost), that 
it was I who was drowned. 

"Good-bye to Archie the lover. Bid the adoring 
husband, Frangois, welcome, my Queen.’’ 

The photograph and letters lay in the lap of the 
artist. With her accustomed habit of thought-trans- 
portation she had left the island cottage, and was in 
a room of the western farmhouse which had been her 
birthplace and childhood’s home. A pale-faced woman 
was standing by a bedside speaking solemn words of 
promise, and a child, her bright hair mingling on the 
pillow with locks so like her own, was pledging her- 
self to care tenderly for a life, or lives, which perhaps 
had no existence. 

It was clear that the time for redeeming that pledge 
had come; clear that Victor Devereux was the son 
of Archibald Trescott. 

And Victor Devereux, who but for the anger of a 
relative would have been heir to all that she now pos- 
sessed, was living in Paris on borrowed money; liv- 
ing miserably she knew, understanding intuitively the 
pride which would never purchase comfort at another’s 


124 


A Grain of Madness. 


expense, even though each borrowed penny was to be 
carefully repaid. This must be remedied at once. At 
least half of the Trescott property — which was not 
large, but sufficient to modestly maintain one person 
through life — must be made over to Archie Trescott’s 
son; to her friend and cousin. She spoke to Pierre 
Devereux in her eager, impetuous way of this desire, 
explaining, exclaiming, urging haste in the trans- 
action. 

It was not the first time that the thought of aiding 
the young musician had come to her. She had been 
casting about in her mind for some pretext that would 
enable her to put money into his hands. It seemed 
to her so fortunate that the letters and picture should 
have been found just at this juncture. 

‘'Tell me how it can be quickly done,” she cried. 
‘T suppose we must have a lawyer. We will set some- 
one about it to-morrow. How I wish we could begin 
to-night !” 

The musician shook his head. 

“You are most kind,” he said, a little proudly, “but 
Victor would not accept the gift, and I, who so heartily 
appreciate your generosity and thoughtfulness, should 
not wish him to do so. We could not rob, or even 
partially deplete, a lady, especially a lady who honors 
us by her friendship.” 

Miss Trescott expostulated and explained, telling of 
that deathbed scene, and of her own and her mother’s 
promise. It was only just that Victor should have the 
money. By all moral laws it belonged to him. And 
was he not her cousin? Did not this fact alone give 


The Stress of New Conditions. 125 


her the right to aid him ? Was it not the duty, even if 
it were not the pleasure, of relatives to help each other ? 
Even though the property were all fairly hers it would 
be her duty to aid him. 

But the musician was firm. 

'‘I could not consent to his receiving that which was 
voluntarily kept from his father,” he said. “He will 
soon be able to take his place in the world, and to earn 
money for himself. I think it best that he should not 
be asked to receive the gift — for such it would be, 
though your generosity would give it another name — 
I thank you more than I can say in his name and in my 
own. I am sure that he would be touched and gratified 
by the thought of that which you would do, but would 
agree with me in declining your too-kind offer, of 
which I shall sometime tell him. It will give him a 
pleasure that no money could ever bestow to learn that 
he may call you cousin. Let this relationship suffice 
for yourself as it will for him.” 

Miss Trescott left the cottage perplexed and 
troubled. She was somewhat hurt as well as a good 
deal disappointed at Pierre Devereux’s decision. She 
felt that her newly discovered cousin should at least 
have an opportunity of accepting or refusing the pro- 
posed assistance. 

But she would not yet abandon her idea. There 
must be some direct or indirect way of benefiting the 
lad. She remembered her mother’s instruction to go 
to Father Alpheus for needed advice and counsel, and 
determined to put the whole matter before the priest, 


126 


A Grain of Madness. 


and beg him to find a way to give Victor Devereux that 
which she considered his. 

Pierre Devereux had never initiated his nephew into 
the drudgery which a technical knowledge of music 
entails. The memory of the time when he himself 
had delved through that which had proved so irksome 
to his soul, seemed to have entirely left him. Both he 
and the lad played so instinctively that dwelling on 
scales and notes was torment to them; so much a 
torment to one who the moment his fingers touched 
the bow went soaring into an upper atmosphere of 
sound as naturally as the singing lark wings her flight 
into the blue, that he had never given Victor that 
training which would have saved him weeks of slavery 
in Paris. 

But the old maestro under whose care the lad had, 
through Vancourt’s influence, been placed, though 
recognizing genius as surely as the connoisseur of 
precious stones recognizes a jewel of first water, was 
yet himself less the artist than the instructor, particu- 
lar in his teachings, precise in his requirements. 

‘‘Ah, little one,'' he said when he had heard the 
lad play, and had given him a long and searching ex- 
amination, “you have much madness but little method. 
That is not a thing to at all discourage. The method 
can be acquired, the madness never. All will go well, 
but there must be much work, long patience. The 
birds of prey will pick you to pieces as the sparrow 
picks the cherry from the stone. Though you outdid 
Orpheus himself, envy would tear your reputation 
to rags did you not play learnedly as well as eloquently. 


The Stress of New .Conditions. 1 27 


The very heavenliness of your music is the thing which 
would destroy you. The mediocre performer may play 
as he will. He displaces no one, no critic thinks him 
worth more than a paragraph. Musicians have no 
fear of him, no jealousy of him, and leave him alone. 
But he who makes mad by his strains, who turns men’s 
heads, and heats their hearts, as you will do, must be 
thrown from his pedestal — if he be allowed to gain 
one — by the cry that he is unscientific, incorrect. This 
would be the shred on which the vultures would fix 
their claws. But we will see to that. They shall have 
nothing to grasp. It will be stupid work. I never 
deceive. Stupid as for the birds to be tied to rules, 
obliged to work along fixed lines. But it would be a 
crime for one with your power to leave any loophole 
for failure. Study, my little one, and practice as I shall 
direct, and ah, the great God ! what a furore you shall 
make !” 

And so through days which seemed never-ending 
the young musician sat, dwelling on tiresome techni- 
calities, learning the details which are usually the 
student’s first tasks. The irksomeness of it tired him 
unutterably, but he never shirked, faltered, or com- 
plained. 

‘‘Ah, my son, you are the pupil who will succeed,” 
the old professor would exclaim, to be answered by 
the boy’s slow, grave smile, and a brightening of the 
dark eyes. 

Miss Trescott had written him letters so filled with 
her personality, so redolent of the peculiar perfume 
that she used, that after their perusal he would walk 


128 


A Grain of Madness. 


the floor in an ecstasy of feeling, and then draw from 
his violin such strains that the passers-by, held en- 
chanted beneath his window, would gesticulate and 
exclaim, and wonder why one who played like that 
was quartered in so poor a part of the city. 

In his replies to these letters, and in his correspon- 
dence with his uncle, he spoke for the most part of 
his work, his hopes, and his determinations; never 
of the homesickness that tortured his heart and stole 
the strength from his whole being. For he was mad- 
deningly homesick. He had no desire for anything 
that Paris contained save the knowledge which would 
make him something in one pair of eyes, important 
in one girl’s estimation. He was forever thinking of 
summer seas over which his yacht had glided with its 
one passenger who was all the world to him ; of an 
island which was enchanted because she had set foot 
upon it, and breathed its atmosphere; of rosy dawns 
ushering in new days when he should see her, and 
hear her speak; of moonlit nights and star-illumined 
dusks when she sat in the lonely little house making 
it more regal than a marble mansion could have been 
without her presence; of the white-robed figure, of 
sunny hair and frank blue eyes; of witty words and 
musical tones, of high prophecies and bracing beliefs ; 
of a thousand alluring things which had touched his 
barren life into beauty, in which he now no longer had 
part or lot. He would not have forgotten these things 
for untold gold, and yet the remembrance of them 
almost drove him wild, and kindled in his heart a long- 
ing which wasted his body like a deadly illness. 


The Stress of New Conditions. 129 

In the night stillness of his room he poured out his 
soul in missives which were destroyed ere the morning 
light came in through the casement, never one of them 
finding its way to her who inspired them. It afforded 
him some relief to put on paper the new language which 
love had brought him. The words which he actually 
sent seemed to him trite and commonplace, and were 
as small a part of his heart as one star is of the firma- 
ment. When the burning words had been written and 
destroyed, his violin would be drawn to his shoulder, 
and a melody of his own composition would be sent 
out on the air. Then the instrument would be lowered, 
the player’s face would be laid lovingly against it for 
an instant, and to it he would half say, half sob : ''Good- 
night, my friend that understands. We have said 
good-night to our Lily Queen and Rose Sovereign.” 

This life wore sadly upon the lad. He had taken 
lodgings in a poor, ill ventilated part of the city, and 
seldom sought gay streets and bright environments. 
Unable to partake with anything like heartiness of the 
food which he allowed himself, this late wanderer in 
broad-lying sunshine, this inhaler of breezes sent up 
from the salt-waved sea, this seeker of all Nature’s 
far places and free wide spaces, was like the mountain 
eagle in the hunter’s cage, or the wild bear of the North 
in the showman’s pavilion. 

As the weeks went on he grew pale and emaciated. 
In the hand which handled the bow the cords became 
plainly visible and the blue veins showed with start- 
ling distinctness. He grew faint one day while going 
through an exercise before the old professor, who with 


130 


A Grain of Madness. 


his numerous cares had little time for looking after 
the physical welfare of his pupils. The teacher gazed 
at him with darkened brow, and when he had recovered 
took him severely to task for his mode of living. 

''Mon Dieu he exclaimed with real concern and 
much irritation. "You are wrong, criminal, bad ! You 
take no care of yourself. You do not sleep, you eat 
not enough ! You will fail, and be yourself to blame. 
And you have not the right to fail. The good God 
will not forgive you, I shall not forgive you, you will 
not forgive yourself. Let this foolishness be done 
with. You are triste. You long for the home. Well, 
you will soon, if you starve and destroy not yourself, 
go out into the big, brave world, and it will become 
your home, and the fame will come, and when you go 
to the old home the place will look little and lonely, 
and the people will take off their hats and do the hom- 
age to him who went out a humble boy and comes 
back a great musician. Come, eat, and drink, and be 
strong. A few weeks and I will place you where you 
will see that which will make you forget. Has your 
room the comfortable things ? Do you buy that which 
you can eat? I must tell the madame to look well 
after you. I will not have you thus.’^ 

The words of the professor had an immediate effect. 

Fail ! And she expected him to succeed. He re- 
called her words : "Go, and conquer the world. You 
will be the Csesar of the musical sphere, the Alexander 
of the realm of sounds.’" The remembrance touched 
him into many resolves. His one dominant thought 
was that she must not be disappointed. Unto this 


The Stress of New Conditions. 131 


thought was due his sudden desire for sleep, and appe- 
tite, and strength. 

He earlier sought his couch, but could not force 
sleep, and lay for hours with the sound of free sea- 
waters in his ears, and waking visions before his eyes. 
He determinedly ate more of his coarse food, and when 
he could not swallow it, now and then tempted his 
palate with fresh and more dainty viands. Although 
he did not become strong, the extreme pallor left his 
face, and there was more life in his grip on the bow. 

Monotonously, tiresomely, but none the less surely 
the weeks went on, and one day in early October the 
maestro laid his hand on the shoulder of his pupil, and 
asked him if he would like to choose his own stage 
name. 

''Why should I choose one so soon?’’ asked the lad, 
looking up from the music sheet before him. 

"Because in two weeks you are to play at a concert 
given in honor of many of the nobles of France and 
Italy,’’ was the master’s repl} . 

The boy paled a little, and laid his violin aside with 
hands that trembled. 

"Prepare for triumph, little one. You will achieve 
it,” said the old man kindly. 

The boy took the hand of his teacher in both his 
own and kissed it. 

"But the name?” asked the professor, with a husky 
sound in his voice. 

"It shall be Carlone, if you please,” was the reply. 

Helen Trescott had once said in his hearing that if 
she were going on the stage she would adopt the name 
of Carlone. 


132 


A Grain of Madness. 


XVII. 

CONSEQUENCES. 

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was 
misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and 
Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and 
wise spirit that ever took flesh. — Emerson. 

‘‘What is happiness ? Not gain and fulfilled wishes, 
for these but create yearnings for more gain, and 
breed more wishes. Not human love which chance and 
change may destroy. I have truly said that happiness 
is holiness, but I have felt the Christ in my heart, and 
the other side of the divine shield stands revealed. 
Holiness is happiness. Lord, thou hast shown thyself 
to me, but not unto many of the race will thy visioned 
Face be revealed. How shalt thou be brought straight 
home to their souls ? I yearn to be about the business 
which I know not how to begin. My learning serves 
me not. My reason has but led me into quagmires of 
doubt and despair. Make me thine almoner for meet- 
ing this pressing hunger of the world with something 
simple enough, great enough, sure enough to make 
and to keep men happy unto righteousness. The uni- 
verse is full of knowledge concerning thee. The 
Churches are numerous, and rich in rhetoric and ritual, 
but men travail, and suffer, and die. show them god ! 


Consequences. 


133 


Behold, I know nothing. I stand and wait. Teach me 
that wherewith I shall lead the people unto that holiness 
which will give them real life. Light! Heart light, 
O my God!’' 

Thus pondered and prayed the priest day after day, 
looking out over the sea. One day as he stood with 
the waves coming close to his feet, light steps glided 
across the sands, and Jetsam’s voice said, as she put 
a thin volume into his hand : 

“It is a strange book, grandpa says, all about mystic 
folderol and moonshiny people. You are so wise you 
will understand it, I am sure. Perhaps you will tell 
me about it some day.” 

She slipped away, leaving the book in his hand. 

To his people Father Alpheus spoke that which was 
in his heart ; spoke to hearers who, bound by theologi- 
cal fetters, chained by traditions held by the teach- 
ings of all their years, were afraid to accept doc- 
trines which seemed too fair to be holy, too joyous to 
be true. They, so long reasoned for, so firmly ground- 
ed in thought obedience, resisted the desire to hear 
more of the things which fascinated them, and by their 
very magnetism made them afraid of them as wiles of 
the evil one. They looked with apprehensive glances 
into each other’s faces when their pastor, so well be- 
loved, so little understood, passed them deep in 
thought, but with the perplexed look gone from his 
countenance, whispering to each other in pitying tones : 

“His sickness has turned his brain. He is a little 
mad.” 

Knowledge of his disquieting teachings came to the 


»34 


A Grain of Madness. 


bishop of the diocese, and the priest was summoned 
before his superior to answer to the charge of heresy. 

Feeling like one who smites with feeble, im.potent 
hands the stones of a towering wall, but whose heart 
must be satisfied by such defense as can be made for 
the faith that is within it, he essayed to answer the 
charge. But the throat of the man so accustomed to 
his own sole companionship grew dry and husky, his 
speech was faint and faltering, and no fitting words 
came to his mind. His hand, seeking in the pocket 
of his coat for a handkerchief to wipe away the drops 
of perspiration which covered his face, drew forth, 
with the square of linen, a spray of flowers and leaves 
which his child-friend had hidden with the handker- 
chief as a parting gift, and around the bishop and the 
man who stood before him floated the perfume which 
had been promised as the sign and symbol of a presence 
which could not be seen. 

The priest was no longer unable to find words. He 
lifted his head and with eloquence born of high thought 
and burning desire poured out sentences that caused 
his listener to think that it would indeed be a misfor- 
tune if the speaker must be put aside from the ranks 
of the ritualists. His story was well told, his reasons 
rationally given, the plea for nobler things nobly urged, 
although the speaker knew that his words were like 
billows dashing against a rock, wind thrusting itself 
upon a mountain of granite. 

The remonstrances, explanations, and reasonings of 
the Church official left him with a patient, uncon- 
vinced look, but far from unmoved. He knew what 


Consequences. 


13s 


adherence to his new line of thought meant, but, like 
the soldier in battle whose limbs tremble from physi- 
cal fear, but whose moral courage will not allow him 
to turn back, he stood firmly by his new standard. 

He was commanded to fast and to pray earnestly 
for light, and then dismissed for the time being. 

The learned bishop, as he looked after him, echoed 
the words of the untaught farmers, “He must be some- 
what mad.’’ 

The priest, so unused to contact with the great world, 
feeling half afraid of its materialism and clear-headed, 
hard-handed manipulation, would fain have turned to 
his old secure hiding behind ancient beliefs, and with- 
drawn to the quiet life among his books in the little 
house on the barren shore, but he knew that were his 
pastor’s robe still allowed to clothe him, and his fitness 
for his office to remain unquestioned, that never again 
could he pour for others the old wine of ecclesiasti- 
cism, never again speak without a shudder of abhor- 
ence of a God who would punish forever, never again 
sit before the latticed window to listen to the confes- 
sions of men to man, and feel that he should have part 
or lot in the hearing of offences or the absolution of 
sins. 

He must go out from the Mother Church. The 
knowledge was exceedingly sad unto him. 

He loved the pomp and authority of the institution 
in whose utter wisdom he had believed. His artistic 
temperament and reverential soul delighted in her color 
and magnificence, her costly fittings, the roll of her 


136 


A Grain of Madness. 


Latin sentence, the chanting of her songs of prayer, 
the incense which rose from her altars. 

His cross was heavy. 

A month after his interview with the bishop he was 
divested of his office of priest in the Romish 
Church. 

He was bewildered by the strangeness of standing 
alone after the many years in which individual de- 
cision had been considered unwise and dangerous. His 
Church had been to him a home. He had never real- 
ized how strong and safe was its shelter till he stood 
at the entrance of a path leading from it, and knew 
that his route must henceforth lie along highways of 
whose inns and guide posts he possessed no knowledge. 

When, after a sermon of farewell which caused a 
rain of tears to fall over the faces of his hearers, he 
sailed away from the parish which mourned but was 
half afraid of him, only Jetsam knew that it was his 
intention to go for a time to the place spoken of in 
the book which she had brought him, the hermitage 
of a mystic brotherhood, and thence to Rome. 

The man’s old self had surged away from him as 
outgoing waves surge away from the shore. All 
thoughts of personality were drowned in the consum- 
ing desire to feed the people, the starving, despairing 
people, with the food which he, after years of empti- 
ness, had eaten. 

Only one of his former thoughts now held its old 
place in his heart. 

The Face which had never left his memory, whose 
beauty, power, and wonder had lost no whit of their 


Consequences. 137 

hold upon him, this Face must be painted ; painted by 
his child. 

‘^The vision which will enable her to do this,’’ he 
said, ''will be a gift that kings might envy, and the pic- 
ture be to the world that to which all its jewels will be 
but tawdry baubles. This vision must be her dowry! 
The only one her father can bestow.” 

There was no reason for delay. No task or kindred 
claimed him. He went to the brotherhood. 

One day, seven months later, he found himself climb- 
ing the many stairs that led to Helen Trescott’s studio, 
high up in one of those tall, shabby houses whose 
rooms are mostly let to sculptors and artists. 

Before either had left the Maine shore Miss Tres- 
cott had approached the priest on the subject of her 
wished-for bestowal of money upon Victor Devereux, 
but Father Alpheus had agreed with the island musi- 
cian that it was better for the present to allow the lad 
the stimulus of making his own way. He believed, 
with Pierre Devereux, that the boy would refuse the 
gift. The matter should, at any rate, he decided, be 
put aside till after the concert of which Victor had 
written as the occasion of his first appearance before 
an audience. 

And so the girl artist had sailed away with the matter 
so near her heart unsettled, trying to be satisfied with 
the priest’s promise that it should, at a later date, be 
adjusted. 

Father Alpheus had not been forgetful, or unmindful 
of the instructions given in that letter which was 
locked away with his few treasures, or heedless of the 


138 


A Grain of Madness. 


wish of the artist to do all that was possible for the 
son of Archie Trescott. He would, if possible, meet 
to the uttermost the generous desires of mother and 
daughter, but at present the musical novice must go 
undisturbed to the trial of his powers. 

And then had come the summons from the bishop, 
and the matter of the distribution of the Trescott prop- 
erty waited for the attention of one who was absorbed 
in other things. 


Master Touches. 


139 


XVIII. 

MASTER TOUCHES. 

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other 
blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found 
it, and will follow it. — Carlyle. 

During the first winter of her stay in Rome Helen 
Trescott painted a little scene which was instantly no- 
ticed and purchased by one whose preferences were the 
keynote to which the fancies of the fashionable world 
were attuned. 

The sketch, fragrant with its suggestions of salt air 
and country freshness, hung on the wall of the great 
man's home, and was seen and admired by his numer- 
ous followers, who asked for the address of its creator, 
and brought her, by their patronage, into marked no- 
tice. 

After a few months in the Eternal City, the knowl- 
edge came to her with no less surprise than conviction 
that her bare painting-room in an obscure street, 
reached only by many steps, was considered an im- 
portant one even among those of the multitudes who 
wrought most worthily and with many touches of 
genius. 

That she was the pupil of one whose fame had pre- 


140 


A Grain of Madness. 


ceded him gave her prestige ; a prestige which her own 
work made lasting, and orders flowed in upon her. 

Unflagging enthusiasm and unabated industry were 
not without their financial reward. 

The young artist was happy with a great thrilling 
happiness. The spell of the place was upon her. The 
atmosphere, so heavily charged with the spirit of gen- 
ius, weighted with the air of inspiration and achieve- 
ment, permeated soul and body. All time passed be- 
fore coming to this land of enthusiasms and visions 
became unreal to her. Her real life was here, identified 
with the dust and desolation, the throbbing dulness of 
these monuments and miracles which gigantic minds 
and skilful hands of the past had conceived and exe- 
cuted, and from which time was powerless to wrest 
their dignity. 

She was a slave to her environment, and wore her 
fetters gladly. 

The pupil for whom her instructor had feared the 
distraction of love and lovers was entirely absorbed in 
her work, utterly busy about one thing, wrapped in 
the ecstasy of creation, weighted down with dreams 
which her inspired fingers were ever trying to shape 
into realities. 

The first gleam of day and the last afternoon ray 
were utilized. 

She seemed like one with a charmed life. She took 
no rest, and seemed to nded none. 

All seasons found her in Rome, and the coldness of 
the winter, and the pestilence which in summer rises as 


Master Touches. 


141 

the people’s scourge from the miasma-haunted portion 
of the city, were not suffered from, or even realized. 

From her studio opened two humble living rooms 
wherein her scarcely-thought-of food was prepared, 
her scanty repose taken. 

Vancourt was also mad with visions, intoxicated 
with art, absorbed in creation. 

Wholly absorbed? He wished and meant to be so; 
commanded himself to be so — and knew that he was 
not. He shuddered as he realized his loneliness and 
dissatisfaction in the midst of work which he had 
vowed should ever be to him as parents, friends, home, 
and which before a summer wherein there came up 
daily from the borders of the sea one clad in soft rai- 
ment, and bearing with her the unconscious sorcery 
which had overcome him, had served him as these 
things serve other men. Within him the battle still 
raged. 

But he had regained his power to paint ; indeed, had 
gained a new and stronger power than had before been 
his, which showed itself in sterner lines and fresher 
conceptions. 

In those days nothing with a hint of softness in its 
composition or execution grew under his brush. Be- 
neath his carefully fierce strokes there appeared on the 
large canvases which he used, seeming to crave space 
for bold, long dashes, pictures of the stern, smitten 
places of earth; storm-stricken, wreck-strewn shores, 
seen in fading winter twilights, with strips of angry 
sunset louds stretching low in the west; mountains 
rising with bold abruptness thousands of feet into the 


142 


A Grain of Madness. 


misty coldness of the air, lightning-blighted and shiver- 
ing pines, their half-uncovered roots showing brown 
against the browner soil, clinging to their sides; cav- 
erns with fierce darkness meeting the eyes at their 
mouths, and heavy surges breaking at their entrance- 
ways — pictures full of the dread and terrible in nature, 
which fascinated beholders with their stern sadness, 
their mighty desolation. 

Vancourt might have been the most feted man in 
Rome. Multitudes flocked to see his paintings, which 
were sold before they were finished. He was talked 
of in every place where Art was mentioned ; 
written of in the papers of all lands. Invitations flowed 
in upon him, and he was deluged with the letters of 
those who would do him favors. But he cared nothing 
for these things. He never listened to the talk, never 
read the papers, though they were sent to him by the 
score, heavily marked. Never accepted the invitations 
and favors, never discussed himself or his work. The 
discouraged worshippers of his genius had no close 
knowledge of or acquaintance with their silent hero, 
and became aware that the passion for Art which ren- 
dered him one to be desired also denied him to them.- 

He gave but little personal supervision to the work 
of Miss Trescott, whose studio was a half mile from 
his own. She had proved herself the intuitive painter, 
possessing that which is embodied in no rule, taught 
by no school. An occasional terse word of advice or 
bit of correction or approval was all that she received 
or needed from him. 

To her, also, invitations were given, and favors 


Master Touches. 


H3 


proffered, to be set more gently but not less decidedly 
aside than were the overtures made to her instructor. 

It came to be averred that the two painters, who 
might have claimed companionship with those of high- 
est social position, owned but one friend, a pale-faced, 
somberly garbed man with intellectual forehead, gleam- 
ing eyes and silent tongue, who occasionally entered 
their studios without preamble, apparently welcome, 
and sat watching them at their work. 

The gay and careless students, meeting for midnight 
carousals over bottles of cheap wine, spoke in the 
pauses of their songs and laughter, half in reverence 
half in derision of the newcomers. 

“Pouf!"’ cried one whose occasional work brought 
forth wonderful shapes, but to whose Bohemian soul 
close application was as irksome as the national vintage 
was welcome to his palate, ''there are no bubbles on 
their beakers, no shimmer to their wine. Leave them to 
their plodding, and drink to gay lives and the morrows 
which take care of themselves.’^ 

The sentiment would be applauded, the glasses 
drained, the laughter and songs renewed, but some of 
the revellers, going to their poor quarters when the 
wine had been wasted and the merriment had died, re- 
membered the high dreams of their earlier days and 
nobler lives, and thinking of the two painters at whose 
consecration they had jested, realized the worth of that 
which had been the butt of their jibes, and knew that 
in the self-imposed limitations of the artists lay their 
strength. 


144 


A Grain of Madness. 


XIX. 

CROSSING THE BAR. 

He had the poet's eyes, 

Sing to him sleeping, 

Sweet grace of low replies. 

Why are we weeping? 

— Rennell Rodd. 

In the little black house on the island, with the sound 
of the sea coming in at its doors, Pierre Devereux was 
dying. 

The disease which had for years disabled his lower 
limbs had at last crept near to the heart, and his phy- 
sician had declared that only a few weeks would 
elapse before death would come. 

The brain of the musician seemed to have lost some- 
thing of its comprehension of present things, for he 
sometimes spoke as though before audiences, and 
uttered thanks and words of appreciation for fancied 
favors. 

He talked of Paris and Vienna, of Rome and of 
Naples, and often seemed to be living over the 
triumphs of the past. 

During these last earthly days Carlone was his com- 
panion. 

A fortnight had elapsed after the verdict of the phy- 


145 


Crossing the Bar. 

sician before the sick man would consent to have his 
nephew informed of the nature of that verdict. He 
longed for a touch of the lad’s hand, wearied for his 
presence, but denied his heart, said no to his longings. 
When the letter of communication was finally written, 
it begged the young man not to leave his work. ‘'As- 
sure him that I am well cared for and want for noth- 
ing,” said the dictator to the old woman who ever 
since Victor’s departure, had attended to his physical 
wants, and who now, with much laborious pains-tak- 
ing, and in characters crabbed and stiff, was penning 
the letter which her employer had tried in vain to write. 
“I would not tell him of my illness at all, only he would 
perhaps blame me afterwards. But urge him not to 
come. Absence from his work would mean disaster 
now.” 

But within two hours from the time the letter was 
placed in his hands Victor Devereux had withdrawn 
his contracts, packed his portmanteau, paid brief visits 
to the two artists and Father Alpheus, and was wait- 
ing for the sailing of the steamer for New York. 

In the face of the tidings he had received he was not 
Carlone; not the new musical wonder before whom 
Rome and the strangers within her gates had pros- 
trated themselves; not the prince of the violin whose 
first strains had entranced the multitude which num- 
bered among its hosts those with the most sensitively 
trained musical perceptions, the most finely poised 
judgment; not the artist who in a month had thrown 
the witcheries of his genius over princes and people 
alike, and to hear whom gold was poured out with 


146 


A Grain of Madness. 


eager effusiveness, at whose feet in a nightly rain of 
beauty and fragrance, flowers fell as the petals of 
apple-blossoms fall in May time. 

It was not Carlone, the adored, who sat waiting for 
the outgoing steamer, but the lad, Victor, whose baby 
fingers had first been trained in their infant strivings 
to evoke sweet sounds by the man who was dying amid 
the stillness and desolation of the New England coast. 

The boy was strangely calm, curiously unelated, over 
his sudden and overwhelming triumphs. He was not 
unappreciative or ungrateful, but his thankfulness was 
a deep, hushed thing which was marvelled at as in- 
difference. 

The greatest, gladdest thought of his heart he could 
not breathe to another. He had not disappointed her. 
She had, by his arrangement, and with Vancourt as 
escort, sat in the audience whenever he had played in 
Rome, and the honeyed praise of press and dozens of 
daily private letters lay unnoticed while he read again 
and again the notes of congratulation and approbation 
of her who had set the seal of success upon him before 
his going forth. 

He saw little of her. The work of each overfilled 
the time. But she was near, was happy, and he had 
won her praise. He was content. 

For the rest, he took the matter of his stormy ac- 
ceptance and the world’s tempestuous approval calmly, 
and gauged them at their proper worth. He realized 
that if by the falling of a weight his hand should be 
wounded, if ,by any untoward accident his brain should 
become unresponsive, that those who now fawned upon 


Crossing the Bar. 147 

him would shower their favors upon a new favorite, 
and forget him as utterly as they had forgotten the 
man who was dying on that far-away island. But 
the dying man had been to him father, mother, instruc- 
tor, through all the years which otherwise would have 
held for him none of these things, and would have 
loved him as tenderly, cared for him as carefully, had 
no talent been vouchsafed him, no sweet sounds writ- 
ten in his heart. 

It was in vain that the manager urged, expostulated, 
and threatened; in vain that he offered to double the 
already large sum which Carlone was to receive for 
his next performance. 

''I am exceedingly sorry, was the thrice-repeated 
reply to all the man's words. ''No consideration for 
myself would induce me to cancel my engagement, but 
for my uncle I must do so. He is all I have in the 
world, and but for me he is alone ; and he is dying. 
Pray say no more. I must go." 

That night he sailed for America. 

The physician was at fault in his estimate of the 
time in which the disease would bring death. Week 
after week it lingered in its progress, reaching no vital 
spot, and Pierre Devereux, bravely and patiently wait- 
ing for the touch which he knew must slay, begged his 
nephew to return to Rome, and was half glad, half 
sorry, and wholly grateful when the lad met all en- 
treaties with a steady and loving refusal. 

The summer waned, and still death held aloof. 
Still the musician talked of other days and other lands, 
forgetting his present in remembering his past. The 


148 


A Grain of Madness. 


lad who listened so patiently and replied so tenderly, 
lived through the hushed days also in a dream; a 
dream of a summer one year dead whose sweetness had 
changed a barren world into a paradise of glowing sen- 
sations and burning hopes. 

In the old time uncle and nephew had spoken but 
little of the Devereux family, but during the days when 
they waited for the death which came so tardily, the 
older musician, in hours when his mind was clear and 
rational, put strongly before the younger man the fact 
that if he chose to resign all thoughts of music as a 
profession, and to let his relatives know of his exist- 
ence, he could undoubtedly claim heirship with the 
great house. 

But to the boy, as to the man, the violin was cared 
for like a sentient thing, which to have lain aside as 
the mere plaything of idle hours would have been sac- 
rilege and dishonor. To both the musicians the silenc- 
ing of the strains which swept away the hardness of 
men’s hearts and the sickness of their souls, which built 
for both player and listener a new world whose fabric 
was all glorious, whose furnishings were all divine, 
that a hereditary power might be preserved, seemed 
not wisdom, but a sacrifice too great to be accepted. 
The only power craved by these two, who would have 
been branded by utilitarians as little less than maniacs, 
and scorned by the worldly wise as simpletons, was the 
power to make men mad with sounds; the only rule 
they coveted to rule men’s hearts by the strains they 
evoked. 

‘'From you I have inherited my kingdom,” declared 


Crossing the Bar. 149 

the lad in answer to his uncle’s words, '^and into my 
hands you have put the key. I shall seek no other.” 

The sick man, who had spoken of the things which 
might be merely for the sake of being quite just, re- 
joiced in the answer. 

During those conversations Victor learned more of 
his mother’s family than he had ever before known. 
He was reminded that after his uncle’s death he would 
be its only living male heir, for the proud race had 
fallen in war and by disease till only one of the five, 
one of whom had been the father and four the uncles 
of the older musician, remained. 

The Italian wife of that remaining one had be- 
queathed to her son her gentleness of heart and man- 
ner. 

Two of the brothers had remained childless, one 
had lost his two sons in battle, and the only child of 
the other was a girl, who had early married a Russian 
prince. 

The Devereux family was not the wearer of cor- 
onets, but one to which the wearers of crowns had ever 
paid homage, and which had ever been too proud of its 
name to allow it to be obscured under any of the many 
titles which had been offered it. For ages its men had 
been headstrong, honorable, valiant in war and wise 
in peace, intolerant to all whom they considered their 
inferiors, often disagreeable even to equals, sometimes 
cruel, always harsh. Its women had, for the most p)art, 
been such as men of this order choose ; graceful, pliant, 
agreeable, fond. 

The mother of Pierre Devereux and the grand- 


A Grain of Madness. 


150 

mother of Victor was the daughter of an Italian count. 
Her great passion had been a love of music; a pas- 
sion which in the months before her son’s birth secret- 
ly indulged itself in hours of consecutive performance 
on an old, dark violin — worth untold gold — on which 
she afterward taught her child to play, and which, on 
her death bed, she gave to the boy of ten. 

In his wanderings this violin always remained 
with her son, and by him it was bequeathed to Victor. 
In its side, set in tiny diamonds, were the two initials 
of the Italian girl’s name. 

Victor had seen the Devereux chateau. One day 
when Paris had seemed like a cage that shut him in, 
and his whole being had been sick for country sounds 
and the sight of growing things, he had boarded a train 
bound he knew not whither, save that it was out of 
Paris. Twenty miles away, at a place which pleased 
his eye, he left the car and walked for hours where 
greenness abounded and little brooks found their way 
through the sloping land. During this walk he had 
come in sight of a grand old mansion sitting in 
terraced grounds and surrounded by carefully kept 
lawns and gardens where noble trees had grown to 
great height. The gardener, of whom he had asked the 
name of the owner of the mansion, had informed him 
that it was the Devereux place, and in the garrulous- 
ness of age, had spoken at such length of the family 
and its affairs that the lad had been left in no doubt 
that he beheld the home of the brother and sister who 
for love of music and love of man had forsaken its 
grandeur. But even as he gazed upon the grand old 


Crossing the Bar. 151 

pile, and took note of the vast possessions of which the 
servant spoke, not for a moment did he wonder at the 
decision of his mother or his uncle. He loved and was 
music mad. 

One evening when a heavy storm had cleared away 
late in the afternoon, leaving a sea which moaned with 
almost human sounds, Pierre Devereux awoke sudden- 
ly from a troubled sleep, and cried out in quick, im- 
perious tones, ‘‘Boy, my violin. I am waited for.” 

Humoring this, as he had humored every fancy of 
this illness, Victor placed the instrument in the sick 
man’s hands. 

The invalid brought the violin to his shoulder, and 
into the room there floated a music as delicate as the 
sound of distant fountains, as ethereal as the sighing 
of winds among pines, as sad as the cry of the swan. 

The lad hid his face in his hands, and great tears 
welled through his fingers. 

Fainter and fainter grew the sound. In the midst 
of a strain of heavenly sweetness the fingers relaxed, 
the instrument slid from the nerveless grasp, and with 
a snap of one of its strings fell to the floor. The head 
of the musician sank back against the chair in which 
he had slept. 

The sun went down amid clouds of stormy red ; twi- 
light came on cold and somber-colored; the waves 
moaned as though in grief for wrecks on other shores ; 
the sea birds plunged and screamed. 

Victor Devereux sat alone with his dead. 


152 


A Grain of Madness. 


XX. 

DECLINED FAVORS. 

Of all artists, musicians are most exclusive in devotion to 
their own art. — M rs. Jameson. 

There was great rejoicing among the music lovers 
of Rome when it was known that Carlone had re- 
turned. The cause of his sudden leave-taking had been 
widely known thrpugh the news sheets, and managers 
and people turned their words of disappointment at 
his failure to appear at the appointed time into praises 
of his devotion to the uncle whose name many of the 
older frequenters of the music halls %remembered. 

On the evening of early September when the young 
violinist first appeared after his three months' absence, 
the house resounded with a storm of welcome, and 
when he had played his first selection flowers’ rained 
about his feet as snowflakes fall in a winter's storm. 

Twice he had played. For the third time he stood 
among the blossoms, and drew his bow across the 
strings of the instrument which had, in the days of 
her dread of a great suffering and her hope of a great 
joy, beguiled the hours of an Italian girl who had 
found life in the somber house a stern contrast to the 
pliant existence among people of soft Southern lands ; 


Declined Favors. 153 

the instrument on which she had taught her boy to 
play, in whose case the diamond initials were set. 

Carlone was very pale and handsome as he stood 
among the blossoms, careful not to crush one petal by 
a careless movement of his foot. The people whis- 
pered to each other that his long vigil in the sick room 
had taken hold upon him, but had made him more in- 
teresting looking than ever. 

Rising, falling, quivering, the strains succeeded each 
other, until, in the midst of a composition which had 
never been written save on the heart of the player, and 
which was pouring itself out for one listener alone, the 
fingers on the strings relaxed their hold, and the in- 
strument fell noislessly on the heaped blossoms. Car- 
lone swayed and staggered, and but for the pianist, 
who had paused and looked around when the violin 
halted, would have fallen, as his instrument had done, 
among the garlands at his feet. 

There was an instant's dismayed hush, and then hur- 
ried remarks, incoherent explanations, startled ejacu- 
lations, no one heeding replies to his questions, but all 
rushing toward the stage. 

Among those who stepped upon the platform was an 
old man, stern of face, with a military bearing, whose 
white hair was tossed back from a forehead which had 
been ploughed deep with frowns, and whose stiff, 
snowy moustaches failed to wholly conceal the straight- 
lined, set lips. That night was the first which had 
found this man in a place of entertainment for many 
years. He had come now only by the strong solicita- 


154 


A Grain of Madness. 


tion of his oldest and most prized friend, with whom he 
was passing a few days in Rome. 

Of all things in a world where many things were 
distasteful to him he most genuinely hated music. It 
was only the declaration of his friend that, much as 
he wished to hear the new and celebrated violinist, if 
his guest refused to accompany him that he should 
remain at home, that had caused him to appear at this 
concert. 

But his hatred could not keep the entire keenness of 
its edge as he listened to Carlone. Some of the har- 
mony evoked by the pale-faced performer found its 
way to his heart, but even this partial power chafed 
him. 

The love of music had caused such havoc of his 
plans, such wreck of his hopes! To-night its strains 
carried his thoughts back to his earliest wedded days 
when the dark-eyed girl who had become his wife had 
beguiled the hours by playing the violin. He had then 
become impatient of the music, which had seemed like 
a voice of longing for things left behind, and had 
harshly bidden the player to never let him see the in- 
strument in her hands again. She had never done so, 
but he had sometimes caught the distant sound of the 
violin. He had held his peace, not wishing to seem 
unkind. 

And then he thought with a great wave of bitter re- 
membrance of the son in whom his heart had hoped to 
find its fpndest dreams realized, by whom the proud 
family name was to be perpetuated, made stubborn and 
disobedient, a v/anderer from his home and fair estates 


Declined Favors. 


155 


by love of the music whose witcheries had permeated 
his nature ere he had entered the world of living men. 

As he listened to the new star, he lifted his face to 
the place where Carlone stood, and his eyes fell on the 
instrument which was pressed against the shoulder of 
the musician. He started violently. There, set in the 
case of the violin, catching and flashing back every 
gleam of light, were the two diamond-formed initials 
of the girl whom he had wedded, never dreaming that 
her skill with the bow would do more for his disaster 
than the sabres of a thousand foes had ever wrought. 
Surely there could not be in the world two of those 
old, jewel-marked Stradivarius violins. 

And then with the long, close look which he gave 
the musician through his glass another memory bitter 
to his pride arose. 

The face of the player was so like another face ; the 
face of the nameless, homeless, honorless man to whom 
the heart of his daughter had clung but the closer for 
her father’s threats and entreaties, and to whose lover, 
when the girl’s obstinacy in love had proved as ob- 
durate as that of her brother in Art, the honored name 
of her sire had been given. Darker still grew the old, 
stern face as its owner remembered that this unknown 
intruder had proved too proud, even in his poverty and 
the position which had been thrust upon him as a fa- 
vor, to bear repeated insults and reiterated taunts, and 
had borne away the daughter of the noble house to a 
foreign land. 

‘‘No one but his son could be so like this peace-de- 
stroyer and honor-desecrator,” the old man muttered 


156 


A Grain of Madness? 


fiercely, all his old hatred of the one who had defied him 
bursting into fresh life. 

When the musician had fallen, and his agitated list- 
ener had, with others, stepped upon the platform, he 
had cast one penetrating glance at the prostrate form 
which was being lifted by several men, and then, speak- 
ing to one who by the authority he assumed proclaimed 
himself manager, he said : 

''This young man’s name, give it to me. I have the 
best of reasons for asking it.” 

The man glanced at his questioner, and realizing that 
in him he saw one who was in the habit of being 
obeyed, and being always anxious to please his public, 
replied : 

'‘His name is Devereux; Victor Devereux.” 

When the half unconscious Carlone had been borne 
to a carriage, seeing the white-haired aristocrat still 
lingering near the stage, the concert-giver went to him, 
and added voluntarily: 

"The young man is far from strong. He has just 
come from America, where he has been caring for an 
uncle, who, after a long illness, has recently died. This 
uncle was a great musician, also, though his nephew 
will outrival him; indeed, does so already. Pierre 
Devereux played for the first time in Rome in this 
very hall.” 

As the man spoke the head of his listener fell a 
little, and something of the sternness melted out of his 
face. He was silent for a moment, and then asked the 
name of the place to which the young musician had 


Declined Favors. 


157 

been taken, thanked his informant, and walked away to 
find his host. 

The gray of the morning had begun to steal in at his 
windows when the old man lay down for a short sleep ; 
sleep which came slowly, and was but fitful at best. 

It was ten o’clock when he sought the hotel where 
he had been told that Carlone could be found. 

It was the hardest thing in life for this man to 
humble himself, and sue for a favor. His was the 
habit of command, not of supplication. But his mighti- 
est love was love of race, his highest devotion devotion 
to the name and traditions of his ancestors. This 
musician alone bore the Devereux name. If the Deve- 
reux estates passed to his niece her sporting husband 
and spendthrift sons would barter its timber lands for 
the price which the lumber would bring, sell its lands 
for villa grounds, bring a horde of sportsmen to shoot 
in its precincts and fish in its streams, and turn the 
stately mansion into a banquet hall of feasting and 
frivolity. 

This must be prevented at any cost. 

Neither must one who was known as an artist reign 
over the Devereux estates. In such a case they would 
be neglected, the prestige and power of the old name be 
lost, and perhaps no sons bred to keep it in the memory 
of the world. 

The last Devereux must come, and come as the 
landed gentleman, to inherit the Devereux name and 
possessions. 

If this could not be, a stranger should be given the 


A Grain of Madness, 


158 

name; the goodliest, bravest stranger that could be 
found, and with the name the estate should go. 

But a mig4ity effort must be made to bring the real 
Devereux as master and possessor of the waiting her- 
itage. 

Though he had never passed a word with the young 
musician, he felt instinctively that the music-madness 
was in his brain, and that no thought of even such fair 
goods as would be proffered would turn him aside from 
his insane worship, more than the thought of the same 
bounty had changed the determination of the son of the 
house of Devereux in the years that were gone. 

But there should be power in the urging, persistence 
in the refusal to accept denial. 

''Ask M. Devereux if he will see one who knew his 
parents and his uncle,’’ he said to the servant, and after 
a brief delay he was shown into the room where Car- 
lone lay, the musician not being able to rise and receive 
him. 

But little softness mingled with the feoling with 
which Pierre Devereux the elder looked upon his 
grandson. He was the child of a daughter who had 
disobeyed him, the offspring of a man whom he hated 
even yet, though he had known for many years that he 
slept beside the woman whose love he had stolen, in 
that far away land beyond the sea. No association 
had made the old and the young man dear to each 
other, and to such a temperament as the older man pos- 
sessed any clinging affection was impossible. 

But he realized the importance of his mission, and 
struggled to be exceedingly gracious to the pale-faced 


Declined Favors. 


159 

violinist with his father’s despised beauty of face, and 
the madness of his Italian ancestor in his brain. 

When inquiries for the health of the musician, and 
condolences for his illness had been offered, Pierre 
Devereux spoke in terms of regret of the relations 
which had existed between himself and the son and 
daughter of his house, and then made known the real 
object of his visit. He urged upon his grandson the 
acceptance of the wealth and honor of his mother’s 
people, provided he would forever relinquish the career 
of a musical artist. The necessities and hardships of a 
musician’s life were held up in dubious contrast to the 
glory, power and pleasure which would come to the 
possessor of the Devereux properties. 

The lad listened patiently, his hand resting on the 
old dark Stradivarius which lay on the counterpane, 
and to which his fingers had stolen when the old man 
had begun to urge his request. 

It was not of lands and gold and worldly prestige 
which would come with the accceptance of this prof- 
fered heritage that he thought, but of his precious king- 
dom of harmonies, beside which the gifts now held out 
to him in exchange seemed pale, poor things. The 
bribe was a magnificent one, but not for a moment did 
it tempt him. 

‘T thank you sincerely,” he said gently. ‘'Your offer 
is a generous one, and I doubt not that you mean it 
kindly, and for my best good. You cannot understand 
my feelings any more than you could those of your son, 
but I assure you that should I accede to your terms I 


i6o 


A Grain of Madness. 


should feel that I had bartered my soul and sold my 
manhood. It can never be.’’ 

Bitter words arose to the lips of the man whose age 
was no gentler than his youth had been, but he forced 
them down, and again went over the ground, adding 
fresh arguments, urging new reasons, but the answer 
was in substance the same. 

‘'I shall not regard your decision as final,” the old 
man said as he arose to go. “I will give you a month, 
two months if necessary, in which to change your mind. 
You appear like a sensible young man, and there can 
be but one sensible conclusion in this matter. At that 
conclusion I expect you will arrive.” 

‘'Do not hope it. You will thus only provide your- 
self a fresh disappointment,” was the musician’s re- 
ply. 

Pierre Devereux waved the words away with an 
imperious gesture of the hand, and with a few gracious 
expressions of farewell, took his departure. 

When he had gone the lad gathered the violin into 
his arms and laid his face tenderly against the dia- 
mond letters in its case. 


The Only Way. 


i6i 


XXL 

THE ONLY WAY. 

The man is proven by the hour. — T ennyson. 

‘‘Can you think of no way in which he can be in- 
duced to yield?'’ said Miss Trescott to the priest. “It 
is sheer madness, actual suicide. I have talked with 
the physician, and he declares that recovery here is 
impossible. How can he be so stubborn when so much 
depends upon his going? Can it be that there is no 
way to change his decision?" 

Carlone had been ill many weeks. 

The long strain of waiting in that island-home, the 
grief and loneliness which his uncle's death had 
brought, added to the impairment wrought by those 
wearing days and sleepless nights in Paris, had rend- 
ered him an easy victim to the malaria which scourges 
Rome during the summer and early autumn. Fever 
had scorched him and chills had shaken him, with 
little respite between their attacks, till now, although 
a deadly weakness had replaced the fire and frost, and 
the physician pronounced him better, he was white 
and strengthless, sleeping from mere exhaustion, and 
taking but little food. 

“You will never regain your strength here," the 
doctor declared. “In a week's time you will be able to 


A Grain of Madness. 


162 

travel by slow stages. Go to Vienna and Naples. 
Wander about the vineyard districts of France. Boat 
and fish, and gather the vintage with the peasants. To 
remain here is sure disaster.” 

But the lad shook his head, and thought not of leis- 
ure but of work. 

He was almost penniless. The money which he had 
earned had gone, for the most part, to those who had 
assisted him during his student days at Paris. The 
small sum which he had reserved for his own needs, to- 
gether with the slender amount which had come to him 
after the death of his uncle, had been nearly all ex- 
hausted by the passage to and from America. 

In vain had Helen Trescott pleaded, and Vancourt 
urged his wish to be of service to him. To accept the 
loan of money from any source was a torture to him, 
and especially distasteful was the idea of seeming to 
the woman in whose eyes he could least afford to be 
lowered, as one for whom charity was needed. To all 
prayers he was unresponsive, replying to Vancourfs 
offer of aid that he already owed him more than he 
might ever be able to pay, and would by no means 
add to that indebtedness. 

In one way those days of pain and languor were the 
happiest of his life. Leaving canvases and brushes, 
customers and callers. Miss Trescott spent hours be- 
side his bed, touching with cool, light hands his throb- 
bing temples, raising his head in her gently-deft way 
while he drank of the mixtures prepared by her skill, 
reading to him in full, clear tones, giving herself in a 
hundred ways to her service for him. 


163 


The Only Way. 

He urged her to forego her ministrations, since they 
consumed so much time, but was, nevertheless, pleased 
when she refused. 

As she sat day after day beside his couch, or went 
about preparing numberless things for his comfort, 
never doing the commonest or homliest things in a man- 
ner common or homely; keeping through all her near- 
ness and tenderness her air of apartness, a new thought 
was born in his mind, a thought so differently arrived 
at, and for a reason so different, yet like unto that of the 
priest and the artist — that she should never marry. She 
should be loved like Laura and Beatrice, with no de- 
filement as the result of love, no common consequences 
to follow in the wake of adoration. Her own beauty 
had grown with the beauty of her ideals, her own 
grace received addition from the grace which was fash- 
ioned in her brain and drawn by her pencil; she had 
been ennobled by dwelling on noble themes. The mu- 
sician had dreamed that one day, should the laurel 
leaves thickly crown him, he would lay all that he was 
or could hope to be, before her, and ask her to bear his 
name. But in those days when the sense of her grace 
and her distinction came so vividly to him, she appeared 
to him as one for whom the ordinary ways of women 
would be in nowise fitting. Millions of matrons might 
sit beside millions of hearths, keeping alive the cus- 
toms, fostering the traditions of their sex, making 
household happiness, guarding family honor. A good- 
ly life, a needed life. But when one planet had swung 
itself away from common stars should an attempt be 


164 


A Grain of Madness. 


made to lure into the path of routine, to turn its luster 
into common shining? The usual orbit was not hers. 
He felt that to her the usual love of man, manifested 
in the usual way, asking and receiving the usual rights 
of marriage, would be desecration. He wondered 
why Pygmalion prayed his statue into life; why its 
pure spotlessness, its undefiled grace, had not pos- 
sessed for him a sacredness which was its dearest 
charm. Those who would handle life’s distaffs and 
manipulate its domesticities were legion, but the queens 
of life, crowned by their own power, were too few to 
be counted in the ranks, or considered among the mul- 
titudes. 

He remembered how once when wandering in the 
forest he had come upon an open space where a mul- 
titude of wind-tossed flowers, violets and harebells and 
other blossoms, had sprung up amid the moss which 
carpeted the ground. On the border of the plot, some- 
what removed from her simple sisters, grew a tall, 
graceful lily, with petals of shining white and stamen 
of gold. Some children, on a woodland excursion, had 
come to the spot, and stopping with exclamations of 
delight, had filled their hands with the simple flowers. 
When one had reached to pluck the lily, the lad, with 
an instinctive feeling that this royal blossom should not 
meet the fate of common flowers, had put the boy 
firmly but not ungently away, bidding him leave the 
blossom ungathered. 

The same feeling which had been his about the lily 
had come to him about the young artist. No hands 


The Only Way. 165 

should gather such as she from their places, and try to 
group them with humanity’s earth-flowers. 

Never did Dante worship the object of his veneration 
with a finer-fibered, higher-keyed adoration than this 
poet-musician gave to the girl-painter. The thought 
of seeking her hand in marriage was put aside as an 
unfitting thing, and in its place came the resolve that 
through all the ages when chivalry flourished and love’s 
foremost task was to serve its object, did knight honor 
his lady with more tender and constant devotion than 
he would serve his friend and cousin. 

The thought of accepting his grandfather’s terms 
never once occurred to him, even while the pieces of 
money in his purse grew so few and want glared him 
in the face. He had uttered the exact truth when he 
had declared that should he receive the proffered herit- 
age he should feel that he had bartered his soul and 
sold his manhood. ‘‘All that a man hath will he give 
for his soul.” The words came to him with new in- 
terpretation and meaning. 

Far away in his stately desolation an old man waited 
day after day for the sign of yielding which was never 
given, the acceptance which never came. 

“Can you think of no way in which he can be in- 
duced to yield?” asked Miss Trescott in her studio, 
where the westering sun was throwing shadows among 
the disorderly orderliness. 

The thin fingers of the priest clasped each other in a 
tense grasp, and his face grew paler. 

He knew of one way in which Victor Devereux 
might perhaps be induced to accept the aid which 


i66 


A Grain of Madness. 


would succor him ; one way only — and the thought of 
that way was bitterer than death to his soul. 

Though a man might refuse to benefit by the gifts 
of another, if he were to become convinced that this 
other offered only that which by all rights, human and 
divine, was really his, he must be more than mortal if 
he persisted in his refusal. 

And that the musician might be convinced that all 
that was offered him was morally his, he must be told 
the secret guarded so jealously through all the years, 
made aware of the shame which, according to the creed 
of the multitudes, was hers to whom he now paid such 
homage and respect. 

And she must know of her parentage before it was 
revealed to Carlone. Could he tell her story to an- 
other while it was withheld from her, or without her 
consent and approval ? 

Ah, no, a double cross if any, the contempt of those 
two if of either. 

And when the secret was known how it might 
spread. The world would say that always had he been 
the sensualist at heart, always the libertine in feeling, 
and that at last, under the cloak of newly generated 
ideas, under cover of convictions freshly born, he had 
thrust away the restraint of the Church, and gone 
out into the world whose vices he had always loved, 
whose pleasures he had ever coveted. 

This thought was torture, but there were others 
which touched him far more deeply and painfully still. 

During those months when she had come daily into 
his vicinity, often into his presence, and in these latter 


The Only Way. 


167 


days when she had shown herself so much the tender 
woman, the thoughtful friend, he had learned to love 
his daughter as men love the children who have played 
on their hearths and grown to maturity beneath their 
roofs. To be with her, trusted and valued for her 
mother’s sake and his own, to show her the small kind- 
nesses which were in his power; to receive from her 
the attentions which it was possible for her to bestow — 
all this was exceedingly sweet to the man who for years 
had starved for love, famished for tenderness. Bitter 
would it be to be shut out from her presence, to see in 
her eyes no look of gladness at his coming, to hear in 
her voice no tone of welcome ; to know that she 
despised him, and would forever turn from him. 

But all that he must suffer by the revelation faded 
into nothingness in the agony of realizing what it must 
bring her. There was ever with him a passionate wish 
to atone to her for all her mother had suffered for his 
sake ; to make up to her for that hour of passion which 
was to change so many lives. 

To serve her even to the giving of his life would 
have been to him sweet. Instead he must destroy her 
happiness, banish her peace, crush her pride. That 
a life might be saved and healed another life must be 
bowed, and smitten, and shamed. In order that the 
death which stops the breath might be kept at bay 
worse than death must be meted out to one who de- 
served only fair things. For him it was justice, bare 
justice, but to be obliged to torment her was the 
hundred-fold reaping of his sowing of sin. But the 
bitter cup must be drained. Did nothing else compel 


i68 


A Grain of Madness. 


it that hidden letter served as a command which he 
could not disobey. 

''If it should ever come to your knowledge that wife 
or child of Archie Trescott lives, you will, I know, help 
Helen to do that which is just. By moral right the 
bulk of the Trescott property belonged to this dis- 
carded son, and now belongs to his possible wife or off- 
spring. Let us meet in the Hereafter knowing that no 
one was robbed by us or ours of anything that was 
morally his. No matter what the cost may be, I in- 
sist that Robert Trescott’s last wish be met, if pos- 
sible.” 

The hour in which the artist put her anxious ques- 
tion was not the first in which the possibility of doing 
that which now seemed a necessity had occupied the 
mind of the priest. He had been over the matter again 
and again, but while the talent of the musician was 
bringing him all needed things, the telling of the tale 
had seemed uncalled-for cruelty. No serious conse- 
quences could come of Victor’s refusal to share his 
cousin’s bounty. There was no sufficient reason for 
shaming and humiliating an innocent soul. 

But now a life was at stake, genius in danger ; genius 
which had already proved itself marvelous. And there 
remained one way to save that life, to preserve that 
genius to the world; a way of thorns, a path of tor- 
ment — but the only one. 

The sun sunk lower and lower. Beside him, her 
hand on an easel, her white gown falling in graceful 
folds about her, stood Miss Trescott, asking with all 
her heart in her voice, a question whose answer must 
be a revelation which would change her whole life. 


The Only Way. 


169 


Through the priest's nature there had always run a 
strand of nobility; nobility that rejoiced that if suffer- 
ing must come, that on him, rather than on another, 
it might fall. Now his anguished cry was, “If I could 
but guard her! If I could suffer it all !" 

She must be told, and the hour was ripe for the tell- 
ing. 

“Come and sit by me, my child," he said, the words 
scarcely distinguishable in his parched throat, great 
beads of perspiration standing on his forehead. 

This studio was his Calvary, the coming confession 
his crucifixion. 

Miss Trescott, wondering if he were ill, moved to 
do his bidding, but ere she reached his side there was 
a low knock at the door, which was half-timidly 
opened, and a child’s voice, with a ring of gladness 
and relief in it, said : 

“I have found you at last. The grandfather bade 
me wait till to-morrow, but I entreated so hard he let 
me go to Mr. Vancourt’s studio and learn where you 
were. Mr. Vancourt said that I would perhaps find 
you here." 

As she spoke slender, lithe hands were removing the 
wrappings from a zinc-lined box. 

“I wanted to bring you a gift," she said. “I knew of 
nothing you would prize but these. Do they grow in 
Italy, Father Alpheus?" 

The small, dark face was raised to the face of the 
priest, and in the child’s fingers were clasped some 
strange-looking wild flowers. 

A thrill shot through the frame of the recipient of 


170 


A Grain of Madness. 


the blossoms as there floated around him, like a cloud 
of incense, the perfume which was to him the fragrance 
of power, a pledge of the constancy of the dead. His 
feeling of direful weakness disappeared. The perfume 
calmed him like a sedative, strengthened him like a 
tonic. 

“You were most kind, my dear little friend,'^ he said 
in his usual quiet, courteous manner, “and to-morrow I 
shall be very glad to see you. I will call on Herr Les- 
sing then, if you will give me his address. I did not 
expect you till later. I must send you away now. It 
will soon be dusk. Good night. I shall see you dur- 
ing the forenoon.'' 

The child went out, and the priest, no longer trem- 
bling but calm and resolute, turned to the artist. 

“I have that which I must say to you," he said. 
“Will you sit by me, here?" 

The studio clock had struck a late hour, and along 
the city streets had long burned the few lights with 
which Rome illuminates her highways, when Miss 
Trescott arose from her chair, having heard the story 
of her parentage and the priest's reason for telling it 
after years of silence. 

On her face there was a bewildered look, in her 
mind a straining endeavor to adjust her thoughts to 
new conditions. As the knowledge of her mother's 
danger had seemed old in the moment in which she re- 
ceived it, so these new facts seemed always to have 
been in her possession. Surely it was not merely three 
hours ago that she had regarded herself as Robert 
Trescott's daughter, a woman legitimately born. She 


The Only Way. 171 

must have known for years that nothing she had 
thought hers could be honestly claimed. 

Nothing? Ah, yes, one thing; her Art. In the 
chaos of her mind one thought was clear, one fact un- 
altered. 

She went to the priest, who was standing with pale, 
averted face and somber eyes. 

'Tlease go now,’’ she said, ‘'but come again in the 
morning. I must be alone to think it all out. Every- 
thing is so unreal to me; everything but one. The 
artist, with or without a name, is still the woman that 
remains.” 


172 


A Grain of Madness. 


XXIL 

NAMELESS. 

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords 
with might; 

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out 
of sight. — Tennyson. 

‘'Miss Trescott, can one give away his name?'’ asked 
Flotsam, sitting on the studio floor Turk fashion, his 
fair hair glistening in the pale sunshine which 
touched it. 

“One can share his name with another by marriage, 
or by adoption, or by legally bestowing it upon him," 
replied the artist, carefully mixing colors on her palette. 

She was never surprised at any question the child 
asked or any remark which he might make. 

Herr Lessing was traveling in Europe with his 
grandchildren, and had decided to winter in Romcr. He 
had taken comfortable rooms, and had settled down to 
his books, his beer and his meerschaum as placidly as 
though there were no more to be seen in this famous 
city than there had been in the little Maine village, leav- 
ing his few friends — for the sake of whose companion- 
ship he had planned so long a stay in their vicinity — 
to show the children the things which he had brought 
them so far to see. 


Nameless. 


173 


The German had always lived plainly, and where liv- 
ing was inexpensive, but entered to his account at sev- 
eral banks were divers sums of money, not over large, 
but sufficient to enable him to carry out his plans for 
his grandchildren, which were to educate them for the 
most part at home, and by travel in many lands to 
cause them to see men and things as they actually ex- 
isted in different countries and under different cir- 
cumstances. 

Sightseeing was to him an undeniable bore, and it 
was a great relief that he could place his charges in 
the hands of those whose pleasure it was to chaperone 
them in the quest for the new-old objects and build- 
ings of interest in this mighty metropolis of the past. 

The children were not always with these friends 
when supposed to be so, and ran a little wild, but never 
came to any especial grief, or wandered into any 
especial danger. Each was true to the old love. Flot- 
sam spending his spare time pretty equally with Van- 
court, Miss Trescott and Victor Devereux, Jetsam re- 
maining hours with the priest. 

It was an autumn morning, with sadness in the pale 
beams of the sun, a hint of winter in the general bar- 
renness of aspect and chilliness of air, when the boy 
sat in Miss Trescott’s painting-room asking his ques- 
tion about the giving of a name. He was silent for a 
moment after receiving the artist’s reply, then he said 
gravely : 

'T think Victor — we needn’t call him Carlone, need 
we? — means to give his name to some one, though I 
don’t see why he should have to stop playing if he did. 


174 ^ Grain of Madness. 

do you ? It would be terrible for him never to play any 
more. He thinks so, too, only he believes it is a good 
thing to do so, as long as he can’t play and give her 
the name too. I don’t understand it at all, but he didn’t 
know I heard him talking, and so I didn’t like to ask 
about it, and I slipped out just .as easy, and went 
straight home.” 

Miss Trescott, whose face was pale, and who looked 
like one who had lost much sleep, turned quickly, 
brush in hand, and asked, almost sharply: 

''Of what are you speaking? Can you tell me all 
about it?” 

"Why, of course,” answered the boy, his head up- 
lifted, his beautiful eyes all alight. 

The artist did not attempt to work, but with brush 
still gripped between her fingers, sat looking straight 
at the narrator as she listened. 

"It was yesterday afternoon,” said the lad, delighted 
to be at his favorite occupation of story telling with 
his admired friend for audience. "I had gone to Victor 
because Father Alpheus said that he wanted me to 
come, but after just at first he did not talk to me at 
all, and so I stole into the next room where I found 
a book with such strange pictures. I dreamed out 
stories for the men and women who were dressed so 
queerly. I could see Victor, but I was so still I sup- 
pose he thought I was gone. He was so pale he looked 
like a calla lily Phyllis used to have, and his eyes re- 
minded me of the star that used to come out first at 
home, which got so much bigger and brighter than 
the others when it grew dark. Victor drew his violin 


Nameless, 


175 


up to him, and put both arms around it, and held it 
close, close, just as the mother held Jetsam and me 
one day when she was ill, and the grandpa had cried, 
and she had said she could not stay with us much long- 
er. And he laid his cheek against the instrument where 
those shining letters are, just as the mother laid her 
cheek against Jetsam's and mine, and the big tears 
rolled down and wet the violin and the pillow, just as 
the mother's wet Jetsam's face and mine. And he be- 
gan to talk to the instrument in a kind of sobby, choky 
way, just as the mother did to us. 

‘‘Do you suppose. Miss Trescott, that there is a little 
spirit in the violin that makes it understand when folks 
talk to it? Perhaps there is, and that is what makes 
it sound so alive/' 

“And then?" said the artist, waving aside the ques- 
tion with a motion of her hand. 

“And then," the boy went on, “how he talked, as 
though he meant it ever and ever so much, and it came 
way up from somewhere. 

“And I cried, though very softly, for he didn't know 
I was there, you see, and I was afraid he would feel 
worse if he found it out, and I kept so still, for I 
couldn't get away without his seeing me." 

“And he said?" asked the artist, waving away the 
explanation as she had waved away the question. 

“He kept the violin close," continued the boy, “and 
he said as though he loved it very much : 

“ ‘You are dear, dear to me, and we have been so 
happy, but she is dearer, and she must be made happy, 
and safe from babbling tongues. She has no name. 


1/6 


A Grain of Madness. 


and there is a grand old name that we can offer her if 
we will but part company. O believe that I shall not 
love you less when I put you aside to assume the title 
and the gifts that I may make hers. 

'Sometimes on Sabbath afternoons while she has 
an hour in which to listen, and all the household is 
ahush, I shall draw you forth, and you shall speak 
again, but it shall be of a husband’s love and the things 
of home. If we accept a rich man’s gifts we must also 
accept his conditions. And the old man who would 
dower a Devereux loves you not, and wishes the soul- 
fire which you kindle to remain unlighted, the intoxica- 
tion which you engender to be un wrought. You are 
now my companion; you shall then be my treasured 
guest. 

" 'I have wished that she might never marry, but be 
numbered among the few who have stood apart and 
been worshipped as great; that all her force, all her 
power should go into her paintings, making them crea- 
tions which must live forever. But with me she shall 
still be unhampered. I shall have no triumphs to bring 
her, naught but my grand old name, and such material 
comforts as I can command by parting company with 
you. But for the horror which I suppose women must 
feel at having no name, I should not dream that she 
would think of stooping to me. 

" ‘Ah, but she shall lose none of her regality. No 
common care shall come near her, no ordinary fret and 
jar touch her. And she must never know that we 
part, you and I, unwillingly. Nothing we do for her 
must be called a sacrifice or seem like one. She must 


Nameless. 


177 


think that the desire for worldly possessions overcame 
us. Perhaps this thought will cause her to respect us 
less, but we must not think of that. Nothing is too 
much to endure if she be the gainer thereby. He who 
cannot give himself for love loves not in reality. You 
are dear, dear, but for her place, her peace^ I can re- 
nounce even you.’ 

''And then,” the boy-narrator went on, "he looked so 
solemn, and clasped his hands over the violin, and shut 
his eyes, just as the mother clasped her hands above 
Jetsam’s head and mine, and closed her eyes, and he 
said some words to God very low just as she did, and 
just as earnest as though God was right there, stand- 
ing beside the bed. Isn’t is strange we can never see 
God, Miss Trescott?” 

"And then ?” asked the artist, again putting his ques- 
tion aside by a gesture, and keeping her voice steady by 
a mighty effort. 

"Why, nothing then,” replied the boy. "He just lay 
so still that he looked as though he were dead, and I 
crept away. But all night I lay awake thinking of 
him, and I thought perhaps you would know of some 
way that would prevent him from putting away his 
violin to give that woman a name. I don’t at all see 
how he can do it in that way, do you? And is there 
any way to prevent it, do you think ?” 

The artist laid her brush aside. 

"Yes,” she said, "there is a sure way to prevent it, 
and it shall be used. I must go to Victor now. I shall 
not ask you to come with me, for I wish to see him 
alone. You were very right to come to me with this, 


178 


A Grain of Madness. 


but speak of it to no one else. You understand, dear 
Flotsam T' 

"'Yes, and I promise to remember,’’ said the boy 
soberly, as he drew his Oriental cap over his curls, and 
with a graceful bow left the room. 

In that Roman studio a tragedy had been enacted 
while the pale sun was sinking, and the work and pleas- 
ure of the city were drawing to their close ; a tragedy 
which was the outcome of another tragedy whose con- 
sequences had spread themselves over many years. 
All life’s settings seemed shifted, all its bearings 
changed. 

In the morning when the priest had come, as she had 
bidden him, Miss Trescott had said : 

"Go to Victor Devereux. Tell him everything ex- 
actly as you have told me. Arrange about the money. 
Make him understand that it is rightly his, and that 
he must take it, and go away at once. I will talk with 
you more when I have thought — have realized.” 

The priest lifted his pitiful, yearning eyes to her 
face. 

"Oh, that I could have borne it all,” he cried, "that 
you need not have suflfered ! Ah, Mother of God !” — 
falling, in his emotion, into the familiar exclamation — 
"how long, how direful are the results of my folly! 
Was it too much to ask that I might bear it alone I” 

The tender heart of the girl was touched, and speak- 
ing in words like unto another innocent soul to one who 
had erred, she said softly : 

"I do not condemn you. Only I cannot think just 
yet. It is very sudden.” 


Nameless. 


179 


There was in her face a mortal weariness, a piti- 
fully bewildered expression, and her voice had a 
strained, pathetic note. 

The priest longed to take her in his arms and comfort 
her as another father might have comforted his child. 
Instead he turned away, gropingly descended the many 
stairs, and went forth into the chill air, having done a 
noble thing, and yet feeling like a criminal ; having 
been true to his best self, but scourged by his con- 
science as one who has sinned in the deadliest way. 

He staggered like a drunken man as he went to his 
room. 

He did not ask that he might suffer less, but with 
intense and continuous concentration he held his child 
in God’s thought, beseeching for her His comfort. 

After an hour of prayer he opened the drawer which 
contained the letter that had bidden him do full justice 
to Archie Trescott or his possible wife or child. In- 
stantly the air seemed palpitating with perfume. From 
the opened drawer there floated the odor which was 
to him the sign and seal of a strong and dear presence, 
lightening his heart like a divine anesthetic, and into 
his soul there poured great peace, profound thankful- 
ness. 

''Again !” he said, lifting grateful eyes as though to 
greet a welcome guest. "Beloved, you are always true. 
I thank you.” 

"Go to Victor Devereux. Tell him everything ex- 
actly as you have told me.” 

This was the new command laid upon him. 

It was a sad, thoughtful, but not a weak or fearful 


i8o 


A Grain of Madness. 


man who sat by the couch of the violinist and told his 
story; told it as the artist had bidden him, as it had 
been told to her. Told of the life of the young man 
who had taken upon himself, with the most sacred 
intention of keeping them, the rigid restrictions and 
severe vows of the priesthood; who had entered upon 
a career which forbids life’s closest relations, ardent in 
the thought of devotion to a cause which he loved, but 
who, untempted and untried before the onslaughts of 
temptation, had underrated the strength of his nature 
in one direction when pitted against its longings in an- 
other. Of her whom he had met at the house of a 
friend, and to whom his soul had gone out in that in- 
stantaneous worship which is no more to be accounted 
for than is the action of the moon on the tides. Of the 
disastrously quick giving of love for love ; of the striv- 
ing of two who shunned danger and dishonor, after 
a safe and exalted friendship, friendship which, when 
the time of separation should come, would enable them 
to touch hands and part, and to turn happily and se- 
renely to the occupations and pleasures of life, missing 
each other as ideal friends must, but being engrossed in 
things apart as ideal friends may. 

They were honest in their intentions and beliefs. 
They dreamed without knowing themselves asleep. 
They baptized their regard at the font of idealism, and 
christened it Friendship, believing, indeed, that it had 
received the right name. 

The priest spoke of these things, and then, with a 
thrill and shiver, told of the night when his friend had 
revealed her intention of going away for a protracted 


Nameless. 


i8i 


absence, and the pent-up stream of passion had burst 
its bonds, and the true name of Friendship been found 
to be Love. 

He told of that night of final parting, of his friend's 
decision regarding her own life and his ; of his renun- 
ciation of all the honors he had hoped to win; of his 
friend's confession, of her marriage to Robert Trescott, 
and of the view which the young man had taken of the 
matter placed before him ; of the request of the dying 
man concerning Archie Trescott, or those possibly be- 
longing to him ; of the promise of the mother and child ; 
of the duty left in his own hands for fulfillment ; of the 
confession of the evening before, by which his daughter 
had first learned of her real parentage, and of the de- 
mand of the artist that the true Trescott heir should 
know all as she knew it ; of her entreaty that he would 
not lose an hour before receiving his own. 

Perhaps never had unselfishness met unselfishness in 
a truer manner than in that Roman chamber, though 
neither the man whose soul was worn to utter sensi- 
tiveness by experience, nor the lad whose delicately 
fibered nature had been blunted so little by experience, 
ever thought that he was doing nobly. It was the un- 
consciousness of entire sincerity, the abandonment of 
utter devotion. 

The priest spared himself in no particular ; he 
shielded his child's mother at every point. For him- 
self and his act he asked no leniency ; for his daughter 
he spoke with all the eloquence engendered by a mighty 
craving for her happiness, the chivalrous consideration 
which does not condemn another's sin, the friendship 


i 82 


A Grain of Madness. 


which does not withdraw itself from the victim of dis- 
honor. 

Victor lifted his glowing eyes, and said, as though 
astonished that the speaker did not know what was in 
his heart : 

'^You think it necessary to plead for her to me! 
What has her father's mistake to do with her? I 
should love her were she the daughter of an unmarried 
criminal; and you are her father, and my friend. It 
was cruel that she should be told this that I might be 
benefited. It hurts me. And yet I see that you could 
not do otherwise. Forget me, and think of her; always 
of her; how to make it all up to her, how to comfort 
her. Think of that, Father Alpheus, and never once of 
me. 

To the lad his love had so long been a recognized 
thing that it never occurred to him that in speaking 
thus he was giving hitherto unguessed information 
to his listener. 

‘'You talk of love, my son," said Father Alpheus. 
“Is it a love that desires marriage? Would you give 
your name to my nameless one?" 

“Marriage is not for one of her genius," began the 
lad, but his speech halted before the word “nameless." 
A woman, and nameless ! And he had read so much of 
the world's injustice to women. Should this thing be- 
come known — as it seemed all things were destined, 
sooner or later, to become known — would reason, jus- 
tice and mercy form a divine trio to shield and acquit 
her? It was not to be hoped for. 

But who would point a finger at the bearer of the 


Nameless. 


183 

Devereux name, the mistress of the Devereux man- 
sion? His manhood had demanded that he decline 
his grandfather’s offered gifts. Did not manhood and 
love now unite in the demand that these gifts be ac- 
cepted that they might become hers, that never she 
might be called nameless? 

''Will you go now, and come again to-morrow ?” he 
said to the priest. "Give her my love when you see 
her. My love, remember. I am tired; I shall sleep. 
Ask Flotsam to come to me this afternoon for awhile. 
I want no one else. I have much of which to think. 
I do not blame you, only for her sake I wish it were all 
different.” 

Father Alpheus had gone away. The boy was sent, 
to remain for awhile, but to be noticed scarcely at all, 
and to be unmissed and unthought-of when he slipped 
away and employed himself with the strange book. 


184 


A Grain of Madness. 


XXIII. 

LEOLIN. 

To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous 
history. — Sir Thomas Browne. 

Honor and shame from no condition rise. — Pope. 

The priest sat with pale face, and burning eyes. Car- 
lone leaned not against the pillows which were piled 
behind him. Vancourt, with his twisted red beard in 
his hand, his lips tightly closed, the brown tint in his 
eyes, stood with his arm resting on the mantelpiece. 

Seated near a little table on which her hand rested, 
clothed in her usual soft, straight robe, was Miss Tres- 
cott. 

To Vancourt she had herself told her story; told it 
as the priest had told it to her, refusing to receive rec- 
ognition or friendship under misunderstood conditions. 

The listener had painted on imperturbably while the 
tale was being told, but had lost not a syllable of the 
story. His reception«of the confession was character- 
istic. 

‘'Have I inquired aught of your parentage?’^ he 
asked, laying aside his brush and facing her. “We 
make names ; they do not make us. The priest ? Why 
should I judge him? I know nothing, care to know 


Leolin. 


185 


nothing of him, save that he is an agreeable companion 
with which to spend a half hour. It is my business to 
paint, not to shrive or condone men. I leave that to the 
parsons. It is the painter in whom I am interested.’’ 

When Miss Trescott had gone he had lighted his 
briarwood pipe, but had failed to keep the tobacco in 
its bowl alight, and had sat for hours with its stem in 
his hand, idle through all the working hours of the 
day. 

He never alluded to the subject again, but by numer- 
ous intangible ways managed to make the girl-artist 
feel that with the tutor and critic was mixed much of 
the personal friend. 

It was by chance that Vancourt and the priest had 
met in Victor Devereux’s room. Each had come to 
learn of the invalid’s condition, and to bring such gifts 
as would be received. 

When Miss Trescott entered the room each of its 
occupants looked into her face and read by that sure 
intuition which love gives that the crisis in her life had 
led to some definite new decision in her mind. 

She greeted them all in her gracious way, made the 
musician more comfortable with pillows, placed near 
him some fresh fruit and flowers, and then seated her- 
self at the little stand. 

‘T am glad you are all here,” she said. ‘T have that 
which I would say to you. 

''When my — father — ” the priest started, and a thrill 
went through him — "told me of that which you know, 
the world’s opinions and prejudices seemed to fall 


i86 


A Grain of Madness. 


around me like a pall, and to benumb my brain. But 
I have since seen clearly, reasoned calmly. 

“The world, if it hears my story, will call me ille- 
gitimate, and so I am if the absence of the marriage 
service of the Church renders me so, but since I have 
thought it all out I do not feel humiliated or degraded 
by my position. 

“Two people, noble of heart and pure of purpose, 
caught in the whirlwind of irresistible desire committed 
a mistake; oh, a direful mistake! before which they 
shuddered, and repented, and for which they tried by 
relinquishing all that was dearest to them, to atone. 

“The result of this mistake was a child ; the child of 
two people, each of whom would have given his life for 
the other, each of whom desired no other save his part- 
ner in the tragedy which the world would have called 
a crime ; each of whom would have spent his life in tor- 
ture to have undone that which was done, and in the 
impossibility of this, met existence in the bravest and 
most unselfish way of which he or she could conceive. 

“When I was in New York there worked by my side 
a young woman who learned painting as an accomplish- 
ment only, for she was rich. 

“From a sister student I learned something of the 
parents of this girl, and of the life they lived. 

“Her mother, a handsome woman of grand presence, 
the daughter of an old and aristocratic family which 
was reduced almost to penury, had married a man who 
gratified his passion with mistresses, and loved no one 
but himself, but who desired a beautiful and dignified 
chatelaine for the head of his house ; who beneath the 


Leolin. 


187 


polish which education and constant contact with so- 
ciety gives, was vulgar, lewd, cunning, tyrannical. The 
woman loathed him, but because of his great wealth and 
the position which such an alliance would give her in 
society, married him. All his habits disgusted her ; her 
cold haughtiness and repulsion exasperated him. They 
lived beneath the same roof, and maintained the show 
and glitter of their joint establishment, but each was 
the enemy of the other. The wife lived her life among 
the material things for which she had bartered her 
womanhood; the husband consoled himself with his 
tipplings, his intrigues, and his schemes for further 
gain. 

‘The marriage promise had been solemnly pro- 
nounced before the priest of a church, and a benedic- 
tion given to the pair. The union was spoken of as ‘a 
splendid match,’ ‘a most fitting marriage,’ ‘a grand 
alliance.’ 

“A daughter was the fruit of this wedlock. Let 
those who have thinking brains and pure hearts tell me 
if, when I was reasoning of this matter which has so 
lately been brought to my notice, and the remembrance 
of that New York marriage and the daughter which 
came of it were in my thoughts — let those of thinking 
brains and pure hearts tell me if I was wrong in decid- 
ing that the daughter born of this wedlock, and not I, 
was the illegitimate child. Was I at fault in believing 
that if shame had touched the conception of either, it 
was her conception rather than mine ? 

“Do not misunderstand me. I defend the birth of 


i88 


A Grain of Madness. 


no child out of wedlock. Did I not say that my parents 
made a direful mistake ? 

''But in what estimation shall we hold a society 
which raises its voice in condemnation and contempt 
when frenzied love forgets itself, and as a result of that 
passion which must ensure its own bitter retribution, 
brings forth a child, while it smiles upon and congratu- 
lates, and makes respected, the begetting of children 
who are the offsprings of those who loathe each other, 
who cannot conceive nobly, or reproduce purely ! Who 
are the cleaner, my parents or those of that New York 
girl ? You know my father. My mother's life was en- 
tirely pure and unselfish, with the single exception of 
this yielding to temptation. And yet society would 
point the finger of reviling at these two, and speak of 
those others as examples for prudent sons and daugh- 
ters to follow. 

"I know you all; know your nobleness, your gener- 
osity, your difference from the world. You are all 
the friends I have, all I crave. Shall I cater to, and 
suffer under, the opinions of a world which thinks the 
thoughts and does the things and sanctions the acts of 
which I have spoken? Never! Your judgment and 
my own shall be my guide. 

"There is no name which I can legally call my own, 
but as my teacher" — turning with a smile to Vancourt 
— "has wisely said, 'We make names ; they do not make 
us.' As under man's law I have no name, I will, under 
God's law, and by God's gift, earn one for myself. The 
name which I shall hereafter affix to my pictures is 
Leolin; the name bestowed by a poet on one who died 


Leolin. 


189 


for love ; the chosen name of one who will live for Art. 
As the sculptor chisels upon the hearts of generations 
the significance of his name, so will I dream out, paint 
out, live out, by consecration, by concentration, by the 
labor which is genius, by the constancy which is re- 
ligion, by the persistence which is triumph, the signifi- 
cance of the word Leolin. 

“I shall not be unhappy. My work is my life. I 
want, would accept, no other. I would not exchange 
my painting-room for the grandest mansion in the 
world. 

''Those who have a right to know my story have 
heard it. Of this I am glad. There is no need that 
others should know that which touches them not. 
You” — turning to the priest — "have doubly convinced 
me of that which I before believed, that useless suffer- 
ing is wrong. Society shall not smile over and garble 
our story, your story, my mother’s, and mine. 

"All is told that should be told. I have called you 
Father Alpheus. It is a title which may mean all that 
it has meant — and more. Let it mean for us more. So 
far as in me lies I will be a daughter to you. 

"We need speak no more on this subject. To those 
of this dear circle I am the woman, the daughter, the 
friend; Helen Trescott. To the world I shall be the 
painter, Leolin.” 

She glided from the table to the sofa of the lad, and 
began to speak of some simple thing touching his com- 
fort. 

The priest trembled in every limb. As when one long 
manacled is released he cannot at once shake off the 


190 


A Grain of Madness. 


feeling of his chains, so in that moment of deliverance 
from the terrible burden of years he could not feel him- 
self free. He had dared all, expecting nothing but 
contempt, condemnation and banishment, and lo! the 
return was life to the heart, joy to the soul. He had 
sacrificed all, and thereby gained all, but the power of 
realization did not quickly assert itself. 

He arose and stood looking out at the pale sunshine 
on the ruins and the roofs of Rome, half wondering 
when he should awake, for surely it was all a dream ; 
one of the many dreams which had befallen him, and 
which had left him sadder than before he slept. 

He must go forth, and walk afar in the pale, hazy 
distance, and see if he was indeed awake. 

Without a word he glided from the room, noise- 
lessly closing the door behind him. 

Vancourt arose to go. 

''1 greet the artist under whatever name she paints,’' 
he said, holding out his hand, and with more warmth 
in his tone than was usually to be heard there. 

Again he was proud and glad of the words and the 
decision of his pupil, and yet, as he walked along in 
the autumn paleness through which the priest had 
passed before him, there were sorely gripping at his 
heart the words : 

''My work is my life. I want, would accept, no 
other. I would not exchange my painting-room for 
the grandest mansion in the world.” He had fostered 
the feeling which generated those words, had assisted 
the mental process by which they were wrought. He 
would not have bad them unsaid, and yet — and yet 


Leolin. 


191 

He was in the position of one who is constantly tor- 
tured by that which he most prizes. He had demanded 
for her the feelings and the purpose which she pos- 
sessed, and yet the answer to this desire was ever 
daunting and haunting him. 

He would have changed nothing, and yet his heart 
was never at rest with things as they were. 

He entered his studio, and began, with long, fierce 
strokes to cover the large canvas on the easel. 

Miss Trescott remained with the musician, planning 
for his tour, for when she had begged as a favor to 
herself that he would use money from the Trescott es- 
tate, assuring him in a way which left no doubt of her 
sincerity that unless he would consent to share the 
property with her she should never make use of another 
penny of it, he had yielded to her desires. 

He was to leave Rome at once. 

When the details of the journey had been discussed, 
and she was about to go, she took his hand, and said 
as her blue eyes met his dark ones : 

'T know that which you would have done, have sac- 
rificed, for me, that the world might never say I had no 
name. Flotsam had not gone, as you thought. He was 
within hearing, poring over a book. You know how 
he remembers, how faithfully he repeats. He told me 
all, for you spoke your thoughts aloud. He did not 
know of whom you spoke, but could there be any doubt 
in my mind ? What form of thanks can meet an offer- 
ing like this? Who that has such a friend in all its 
borders shall call the world desolate? Never dream 
that your sacrifice — for the real thing is ever in the 


192 


A Grain of Madness. 


inception rather than in the doing — was in vain. He 
who can touch hands with even one whose nobleness 
is attested, whose unselfishness is assured beyond per- 
adventure, whose friendship is a great rock into whose 
shadow he can always flee from the pretence and the 
hypocrisies of the world, is armed for the battle of life 
with the force of faith, panoplied by the triumph of 
trust, cradled by the repose of entire confidence. 

‘‘I shall live better, paint better, because of your 
willingness to put aside your life to make mine safer, 
richer. 'Greater love hath no man than this.’ That 
cannot refer simply and always to the mere physical 
life. The giving of that would sometimes be so poor 
beside other givings. You would have given more. I 
shall not — how could I through all my life? — forget.” 

The musician was alone. The pale sun no longer 
shone on the roofs and ruins. There was a somber 
light in the streets, and in the room deep twilight. But 
in the heart of the lad, usually so susceptible to all the 
changes of light, there was a gladness which no 
shadows could dim; gladness pathetic in its intensity, 
solemn in its thankfulness. 

As a mother draws her child to her breast and kisses 
its brow, he softly drew his violin into his arms, and 
rested his lips on the gem-formed initials of the Italian 
maiden’s name. 

He lifted the case to his shoulder, and the feelings of 
his soul went out into the empty room in strains which 
Europe would have poured out its gold in showers to 
have heard, and managers would have had resound 


Leolin. 


193 

across the spaces of their theatres at the cost of un- 
stinted compensation. 

He played to his friend, to her high courage, to her 
unselfish honor, to her undoubted genius; played out 
his love for her, his belief in her, his thankfulness for 
her. 

When the bow was put aside he again gathered the 
violin, as some recovered thing, closely into his arms, 
and with it resting on his breast, fell into a happy sleep. 


194 


A Grain of Madness. 


XXIV. 

FAIR FIELDS. 

Easily ye may discern him, and beckon him forth from the 
throng ; 

Ye surely shall know him by this — he hath slept on the 
Mountain of Song. — Edith Thomas. 

Was he the spirit of Bernardo who with his silver 
lute held the Roman multitudes motionless and dumb 
as though death had touched them where they stood? 
Was he the reincarcerated Cimarosa, with the wealth 
of wild waters, of swinging boughs, of sighing winds ; 
the might of the cataract and the rush of rivers, the 
ring of the shepherd’s horn and the piping of the goat- 
herd’s reed ; the laughter of the vintage gatherers, the 
swaying sound of the threshing flail; the passionate 
trill of bird-voices, the music of summer days, the 
echoes of winter nights, caught and sent forth from the 
strings of his violin ? In him did Apollo visit the earth 
to charm its denizens anew? Was Orpheus again 
among men? Did Pan live once more to make men 
mad with his melody ? 

The dwellers in those Italian lands to whom the his- 
tory and the legends — the latter seeming to them as 
probable as the former — of their country had been 
handed down from mouth to mouth, asked these things 


Fair Fields. 


195 


with that superstition which is half their charm, and 
with that belief in the supernatural and miraculous 
which affords them equal satisfaction and terror. 

They believed in spirits and angels. Was it not in 
the power of these wonderful beings to walk the earth, 
and do whatsoever they would ? 

Those who were wise in the written lore and trained 
melody of music, and had for half a century listened 
to giants of the bow, declared him king of them all, 
and brought to him their incense, poured out to him 
their praise and their gold, and wondered not at all at 
the wonderings and ravings of the common people. 

Everywhere on Italian soil he was heard. 

He refused to be long held in one place, but wan- 
dered about, reviving the history, repeopling the cities, 
going over the romances, conjuring up the bygone 
scenes of this land of Virgil and Cicero, whose inspira- 
tion blossomed into song or rolled into stately phrases ; 
of Raphael, snatching from the blue depths of sky and 
floating fleece of clouds the idea of his heavenly faced 
children ; of the mighty Angelo, fashioning the likeness 
of rulers whose mandates he dared to disobey, painting 
out the sternness of his character in the frescoes of the 
Sistine Chapel, breaking his heart over the banishment 
of his one friend, Vittoria Colonna; of Romeo and 
Juliet, with their stolen wooing in the dusk of summer 
nights, and their tragic death ; of Dante and the stately 
woman of his worship; of Desdemona and her pas- 
sionate lord; of Lorenzo and Jessica beneath the meh 
low rays of the moon; of Titian, catching the magic of 


196 


A Grain of Madness. 


his colors from the heavens; of Rembrandt grasping 
the glory of the shadows. 

On the home island, with only the sea surges break- 
ing the stillness, he had lain day after day on the for- 
est mosses or the pebbles of the shore, reading of 
these people, who, now that he was amid the scenes 
of their achievements and their loves, became to him 
real personalities. 

His uncle's neighbors, when they had thought of 
him at all, had supposed him to be tilling Pierre Dev- 
ereux's little garden plot, fishing in the sea or the 
streams, or, what was more likely, strumming on his 
violin. 

With that obtuseness by which the ignorant mind 
sets down as useless everything which it cannot com- 
prehend, the people of the island and hamlet had voted 
with almost entire unanimity that the usual occupation 
of the sick man's nephew was such as produced vaga- 
bondism, and could lead to no substantial good. 

, But the lad had read on, played on, though some- 
times the weeds had grown tall in the garden, and 
there had been for dinner only bread and vegetables 
when there might have been fish as well. 

But Pierre Devereux had been content, and neither 
he nor the boy had thought of the missing fish. 

But when across the waves there came, through 
printed reports, and sometimes by private letters, tales 
of Carlone's triumphs, stories of Carlone's popularity, 
and of his performances before rulers of states, and 
wearers of the world's costliest jewels and richest 
robes, the farmers, cutting the grass in company, would 


Fair Fields. 


197 


stop for a moment the ringing swish of their scythes 
to say to each other that it ''was strange how that lazy 
chap of Devereux’s had turned out” and the women 
between the moulding of their great pats of butter, or 
in conclave over the teacups, would assure each other 
that though "they had never said much about it they 
had always thought that Victor Devereux — they wasn^t 
going to bother with that new-fangled name of his — 
had something in him different from most boys, though 
goodness knew that farming was a thousand times bet- 
ter than tearing around the country making folks crazy 
with a violin, if people didn't make such a fuss about 
\t” 

Carlone was happy with that deep, spirit-born hap- 
piness which owns no thanks to material things. 

His music, his love, and his dreams, so different 
from all that the world holds as the best gifts, were 
enough. 

The people spoke of him as a youth pensive and 
somewhat sad. His laugh was seldom heard, and he 
was much alone, but there was a shining in his eyes, 
and about his mouth a soft curve, as though he smiled 
at felicitous fancies. 

He was heard everywhere. 

Before the doors of rustic homes, where on feast days, 
or when the hours of labor were past, young men and 
maidens danced together till the black locks were damp 
about their dark brows, the strains of his violin were as 
perfect as when they floated down to those whose 
favor was fame, whose commendation was wealth. The 
airs which he played to men and women working in the 


198 


A Grain of Madness. 


fields, knowing that by them he could dispel, for a few 
moments at least, the dull look of those who have 
nothing in their lives but toil, were gems as radiantly 
beautiful as those which caused richly appareled wom- 
en to weep, and brought myriads of costly blossoms 
tumbling to his feet. '‘He could not touch the strings 
badly,'’ one maiden said, when, because they had 
looked pale and worn, he had played long for her and 
her mother in the fields. 

It was the simple truth. 

Venice, in whose water-ways and under whose pal- 
ace casements were heard the serenades of Stradella, 
was the city in which he best loved to linger. Here he 
was feasted like a god, bowed down to like a monarch. 
These people, with the utter spontaneity and the quick 
enthusiasms of their emotional natures, set up his 
name in vivas of acclaim, caressed him with soft 
phrases and terms of endearment for which the English 
tongue has no equivalent, and made the days for him 
one long festa, the nights a continuous triumph. 

In other cities it was the same. 

He was grateful to the people, but he lived a life 
apart from all this gayety and adulation, and was best 
content when away from the towns, away up among 
the mountains, where the air was fresh and keen, or 
down near the shore of some lake where life was quiet 
and simple, where people went about the daily work 
which brought their daily bread, and left him to his 
dreams, or in the heart of some little hamlet where the 
fisher folk sailed out in boats, and mended their nets in 
the sun. Wherever was the least restraint, and the 


Fair Fields. 


199 

sweetest sounds came to keep time to his musings, there 
he best loved to be. 

It was five years since Leolin had given back to him 
his companion, the dark violin with the gem-formed 
initials in its case. 

With it he had sailed to English shores, and London 
had given him its greeting, and applause, which were 
deep if slow, sincere if somewhat grave, and other citie.? 
of the mighty isle had brought their garlands for his 
wearing. 

He often played in Paris, but did not linger in the 
gay capital for any length of time. It had never been 
a place to suit his moods. Rome was the central city 
of his love. He often wandered from it, but to it his 
mind went back, and on it his thoughts rested as home. 
The queen of his realm was there. In one of its stu- 
dios Leolin was painting her name on the minds of 
men, engraving it on the memories of the multitude. 

The prophecy of a summer night, with the moonlight 
lying in a silver square on the deck of his tiny yacht, 
was fulfilled. He was the Caesar of the musical sphere, 
the Alexander of the world of sounds. 

He was strangely unspoiled by the world’s homage 
and his triumphs. He was too modest of heart, too 
free of self-flattery, to be aware of the personal mag- 
netism which was really his. ‘T am only the reed 
through which the music blows,” he declared humbly. 
‘Tt is not I for which the people care. It is the sounds 
which somehow get into my brain, and come out 
through the instrument. I am nothing.” 

He was lithe and strong, though slighter of form 


200 


A Grain of Madness. 


and paler of face than in the old days. Contact with 
the world had given him a polished manner, and new 
glory and fresh hope lent assurance to his demeanor 
and conversation. 

For the rest, he was the silent lad of the Maine coast, 
the dreamer of the New England forest, the unrhyming 
poet, touched by all color, thrilled by all sweet sounds, 
moved by every heroic deed and tale — true, serious, 
tender ; a wanderer in a self-created world. 

He was passionately grateful that life had been so 
kind to him while it tortured and disappointed so 
many. He longed to render an effective thank-offer- 
ing, to give an equivalent. It was this feeling which 
generated his strong desire to charm the poor, to put 
something of color and brightness into the existence 
of the peasants, to call somewhat of rose and gold into 
the gray sky of those who could pay no money for the 
pleasure he gave them, add no praises where commen- 
dation meant gain. 

In many poor homes where he made melody he left 
pieces of gold. 

He hoped the time would come when he could do 
more ; when he could offer gifts of real service, actual 
help. 

It came sooner than he had dreamed, and in a form 
different from anything which had occurred to his 
imaginings. 


Pitchers Cracked and Renewed. 201 


XXV. 

PITCHERS CRACKED AND RENEWED. 

With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells 


In this world. — E. B. Browning. 

Myself did eagerly frequent 


Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 
About and about; but evermore 
Came out by the same door where I went in. 

— Omar Khayyam. 

mad fanatic !’’ cried the tireless money gatherers. 

Others called him, reverently, ‘‘the Breath of God.” 

The recluse priest had become the world's evangelist. 

For him, as for Carlone, there had been five years of 
wandering, but unlike the musician, he sought no soli- 
tude but for prayer and meditation, lingered in no quiet 
places, though the green and blossoming things of 
earth were dear to him, and rest often sorely needed. 

He sought people; people always and everywhere, 
that unto them he might proclaim the power which had 
burst his bands of death asunder, and made of his soul 
a living thing. His years were far spent, and the bur- 
dened ones of earth were so many; This was the 
thought which allowed him no pause. 

In many lands his far-reaching, magnetic voice rang 


202 


A Grain of Madness. 


within the walls of cities and through the open spaces 
of country towns and by-ways. 

‘‘To me has been given Life/’ he had said on that 
pale autumn day when he had gone forth from the for- 
giving presence of Leolin. He had wandered on till 
he stood in the Forum of Trajan. There, amid the 
stillness and the sternness of that forest of stone he 
had solemnly consecrated himself to the service of hu- 
manity. 

Such money as was oifered him he received, but 
made no terms, suggested no compensation, and begged 
his daughter to send him no remittances. He never 
wanted for anything. 

“What say ye,” he cried to the multitudes, “is the 
most valuable thing in life ? If I seek the marts where 
men coin brains and souls into gold, and ask. What 
hope ye as the fruits of your endeavors? the answer 
will be. Happiness. If I pause where plodding indus- 
try gives its days to accumulation and grows bitter over 
slow increase, and inquire. What expect ye from your 
travail? the reply will be. Future happiness. If I ask 
the woman of fashion why she arrays herself in robes 
of richness, and spends her days in following after 
pleasure, I shall learn that the striven-for thing is hap- 
piness. If I inquire of the murderer, the gambler, the 
swindler, the keepers of infamous houses — all who 
seek by schemes, or labor, or fraud, to add to their pos- 
sessions or to pander to their sensations, what is the 
desired object of their strivings, from each I shall re- 
ceive the reply : Happiness. 

“And in his desire each will be wise ; for happiness is 


Pitchers Cracked and Renewed. 203 

the most powerful, the most vitalizing, the most ener- 
gizing, the most ennobling thing in life. It is holiness, 
wholeness, satisfaction. 

‘'Unhappiness is the father of destruction, its results 
firebrands which bring devastation into the affairs of 
men. Depravity may slay by thousands; unhappiness 
slays by tens of thousands. For every sin actuated by 
depravity a million are perpetrated because of unhappi- 
ness. 

“Woo happiness. Seek it as the pearl of great price. 
It is your birthright. Without it you are destitute of 
your most precious inheritance. It is the kingdom of 
heaven unto which all things shall be added. 

“Believe not him who declares that it is not neces- 
sary for man to be happy. Happiness is a necessity to 
wholeness, holiness. Unhappiness is itself a sin. 

“But what is happiness? Is it given by the success 
of the speculator, the delved-for gains of trade, the 
nerve-bought spoils of the gambler, the hysterical hunt 
of fashion’s slave? 

“It is freedom from the tyranny of these things. It is 
a serene, high thing, untroubled by gusts of pain, or 
passion, or pleasure, or lusts or disappointments. It is 
God’s strength, God’s power, God’s calmness. It is no 
mere mystical dogma, but a thing as tangible as elec- 
tricity, as forceful and efficient as the law of gravity. 
It is directed vibration between God's spirit and the 
spirit of man. 

“It is born of the king-brain, which is the center of 
your being. It is not believing something about God, 


204 


A Grain of Madness. 


but knowing God; not the acceptance of a creed, but 
the realization of a spirit within. 

'‘Where is this happiness, which is God, to be found? 

"Never in the noise; always in the silence. Go ye, 
therefore, each day into the silence for an hour, a half 
hour, such time as ye can make. Still the surging 
thought currents. Call your attention home, and let 
your whole being he concentrated on your desire for 
God. Do not reason about him. By the Spirit reason 
and intellect may be mightily quickened, but by their 
use alone the kindling of the divine fire is hindered. A 
man and a woman stood in a garden from which each 
gathered a rose, The man picking his flower to pieces, 
spent many minutes analyzing its parts, and, unmoved, 
put it aside. The woman held her rose to her face, took 
in long breaths of its fragrance, and, knowing nothing 
of its structure, was happy in its perfume and grace. 

"Do not try to analyze God ; draw Him close to you, 
and enjoy Him. The infant knows not a single fact 
about its mother. It does not realize that she is a wo- 
man, or what are her functions or capabilities; it just 
feels that she is all it needs, and cries out to her with 
all its heart. Let your hearts feel, and cry out to God. 

"And learn ye the power of right breathing, which is 
breathing into holiness. Know ye that right breathing 
leads to right thinking, and thought, which is the in- 
strument of the mind, rules the world. There is but a 
single root word for spirit and breath. 'The Lord God 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul.' What forever and always creates 
a living soul save the spirit of God? Not foolishly do 


Pitchers Cracked and Renewed. 205 

the Orientals give spiritual meaning to the act of respi- 
ration ; not unwisely or without reason did the Greeks 
believe that the soul is cleansed by deep breathing as 
the body by bathing. Then learn ye to breathe not the 
quick breath of weakness or impotence or excitement 
or fear, but the deep, far-reaching breath of strength 
and power and calmness and courage. 

'‘There are reasons for these things which I cannot 
pause to explain, but the effect is far more important 
than the reasons, as the effect of your breathing 
through your lungs is far more important than why you 
thus breathe. When one whose work it is to teach the 
science of these things comes among you, avail your- 
selves of his knowledge, if you will. But in the mean- 
time do the things, persistently, regularly, unceasingly. 
Then will you begin to know what real happiness is, 
and in time, longer or shorter according to the in- 
tensity of your desires, or created vibrations, will you 
be given intuition, understanding, illumination, free- 
dom from evil thoughts, guidance for future conduct, 
heavenly companionship, the joy and exhilaration of 
life abundant. Then shall things take their true places 
in the scale of values, and while the ‘all things’ may not, 
undoubtedly will not, be the things you once consid- 
ered most important and to be desired, God will surely 
keep His word that all needed accessories shall be added 
to your kingdom of heaven. You will not know hun- 
ger or thirst or nakedness, but be fed and clothed as 
the sons of God. Every true pleasure will be more 
fully enjoyed, every friendship become more satisfy- 
ing, every experience have a deeper meaning, and in 


2 o 6 a Grain of Madness. 

reality shall all things work together for your spiritual 
and physical good. You shall go from strength to 
strength, from purity to purity, from might to might, 
until you ‘awake in His likeness,’ and ‘are satisfied.’ 

“I have said with truth that happiness is holiness. 
Turn your faces to the reverse side of the divine shield, 
and know that holiness is happiness.” 

“A mad fanatic !” cried the tireless money gatherers. 
Others called him, reverently, “the Breath of God.” 


Pictures and Pauses. 


207 


XXVI. 

PICTURES AND PAUSES. 

The pOAver depends on the depth of the artistes insight of 
that object he contemplates. — Emerson. 

The atmosphere 

Breathes rest and comfort, and the many chambers 
Seem full of welcomes. —Longfellow. 

‘T have seen the Christ 

The words of the watcher in pallid land repeated in 
an old Italian garden aflame with color, rioting in 
bloom. 

“You have seen the Christ? What mean you? If 
you have indeed seen Him, what shape took He before 
your eyes 

The heart of the priest leaps in his bosom, and the 
words, spoken in the ancient manner which in his days 
of solitude had become habitual to him, and which he 
has never lost, are eager and quick. 

Has she at last seen, at last comprehended? 

For years never a night had passed, however weary 
with traveling and teaching he may have been, but for 
an hour, two hours, three hours, sometimes when his 
duties had been comparatively light, till far into the 
morning, he had sat with all his faculties massed into 


2o8 


A Grain of Madness. 


one chord of suggestion, to bring before the mental 
sight of another the sublime thing which he had once 
seen, and ever afterwards beheld. 

‘^Will she never see!’^ had sometimes been his im- 
passioned cry. If any glimpse of that glorious Face 
had come to her could she have remained silent? 
Would she never speak? 

At last she had spoken. 

She had seen the Christ ; the Christ of pallid land. 

Her reply, so awed, so enthusiastic, voicing a feeling, 
so like unto his own that the strongest words were im- 
potent to describe this incarnation of Might and Radi- 
ance — by this reply he was assured that his long mental 
labor had not been in vain. 

His desire to bequeath to her a heritage richer than 
gold, of more worth than jewels; to atone to her for 
the lack of a name by the bestowal of the most glorious 
mind-model ever possessed by mortal — this desire had 
reached a grand fulfillment. 

With all his soul he thanked God. 

She had at first found no name for this vision. Upon 
her mind, as upon the mind of the priest, had been im- 
pressed the image of a worn and lacerated Christ, the 
bearer of unlightened burdens, the victim of unpitied 
woes, the Saviour of a world which repaid salvation by 
crucifixion. 

Not all at once had the perfect Vision come to her. 

It was before her mind but faintly and in part for 
weeks and months, but growing always clearer in form, 
surer in color, as the growing sunrise splendor shapes 
itself in the east. Glory by glory, had it come to per- 


Pictures and Pauses. 


209 


fection. When day after day it appeared before her 
mental vision, and, as week followed week, disappeared 
not, she recognized in the Face, like in its mighty ten- 
derness and unearthly beauty to no face among men, 
the countenance of the Lord, and at last said to the 
priest : 

* '‘I have seen the Christ/’ 

Vancourt, too, had seen the Christ, but nothing in 
his vision was like unto the picture in hers. 

Stronger and stronger through the years had grown 
his painting. His shadings had become heavier, his 
strokes more tense and stern. 

He had come to be spoken of as the Painter of 
Power. 

He, too, had seen the Christ. Seen him not in glory, 
but in shame ; not in triumph, but amid Calvary’s black- 
ness of darkness. 

He had seen the Christ, but it was as the Incarnation 
of Sorrow, the Embodiment of Despair; the dead 
Christ alone on the cross at midnight, the wrack of 
inky, frowning clouds above him, the tragedy of a mis- 
understood life, of betrayal unto death, of the breaking 
heart and bloody sweat beneath the somber olives of 
Gethsemane, the mortal agony of tender, torn flesh and 
writhing nerves — with the utmost terribleness of these 
things within the Face, he had seen the Christ. 

As unto the pupil had come, glory by glory, the vis- 
ion of the conquering Lord, so, detail by detail, there 
had risen before the mind of the master the whole hor- 
rible tragedy of cunning cruelty and blind brutality, 
centered and symbolized in that figure over which the 


210 


A Grain of Madness 


thick darkness hovered in the Countenance whereon 
the passions of a nation’s hate had written a record of 
the triumph which was to prove that nation’s doom. 

Master and pupil had seen the Christ. 

Outside of the city, set in a wilderness of trees and 
vines, was a stately old mansion, half-ruined but 
wholly beautiful, which was pointed out as the home 
of the noted artist, Leolin, of whose history Rome was 
so ignorant. 

To this house the priest sometimes came for brief 
visits, and wherever his wanderings might lead, the 
thought of this green-laureled retreat, and the woman 
who came down the rose-lined path to meet him, was 
home. 

In another home, in another country, a grand 
chateau set in ample, spreading grounds, within whose 
domains many servants waited to be bidden to their 
tasks ; on whose walls hung masterpieces of old paint- 
ers; in whose vast banquet-room there gleamed on 
tables and glowed on sideboards massive vessels of 
silver, glass of costliest pattern and device — a house 
which stretched away into lofty saloons and galleries, 
each furnished with a dark, substantial dignity which 
only very light hearts and blithesome fancies could ren- 
der less than oppressive — in this home Father Alpheus 
was also looked for with eagerness and welcomed with 
cordiality. 

When from a penniless musician, a youth sick, and 
almost inevitably in need, there had corhe to Pierre 
Devereux the courteous but decided refusal of his 
oifered estates and position, the wrath of the old man 


Pictures and Pauses. 


21 I 


was fierce and violent. He raved as he had done when 
a daughter had dared his anger for love, and a son had 
disobeyed him for music. In the bitterness of his dis- 
appointment and the fury of his anger he vowed with 
many an oath that no relative of those who had borne 
the Devereux name should inherit the Devereux prop- 
erty. None of those Russian cubs should come, with 
their wild ways and devastating waste, to glean ad- 
vantages which they would never appreciate. He 
would adopt a son who would be different in every way 
from his own obstinate offspring, and the grandson 
whose tastes were a disgrace to a race of warriors and 
statesmen. He would waste no time before looking 
for a young man gallant and tractable, who could rec- 
ognize the greatness of great men and things, who 
would be the companion of his old age and become his 
heir. 

He found such a young man without an effort. 

One day in conversation with Carlone Flotsam 
learned of the old chateau which had been the home 
of the musician’s mother and uncle, and of the violin- 
ist’s decision never to become its owner. 

When wandering through France a fancy had seized 
the lad to visit this old place. On finding it he ob- 
tained permission to go over the house on pretext of 
wishing to examine its rare paintings, of which he had 
heard. 

Its stern-faced, fierce-mannered master was himself 
the young man’s guide. 

Without a shade of insincerity or an unfelt exclama- 
tion the boy went into ecstasies over the house and its 


212 


A Grain of Madness. 


treasures, and standing before the long row of Dev- 
ereux portraits, made for each, as appropriate for its 
original, such wonderful and graceful stories of hero- 
ism and chivalry, that, although the imagined charac- 
ter often came far from fitting its subject, the face of 
the Devereux whose portrait hung last in the line re- 
laxed, and he listened with pleased interest to the im- 
provised tales of the stranger. 

‘'You must feel so proud and honored to be one of 
them!” said the flute-like voice of the boy, while the 
lovely eyes, blue and wonderful as Italian skies, looked 
into the keen gray eyes of the chateau’s lord. 

“A delightful companion,” thought the lonely old 
man, and detained his visitor long, and had him dine 
with him. 

The lad was not surprised. Through all the eighteen 
years of his life he had been admired, caressed, listened 
to with interest by friend, acquaintance and stranger. 
His handsome person and strong magnetism had never 
failed to gain him admirers everywhere, while to those 
who knew him best he was most dear. 

The master of Devereux Hall drew from him the 
story of his life, parentage and antecedents, and asked 
for an address where a letter would reach him. 

A month later, at its master’s request. Flotsam again 
visited Devereux Hall, and on this occasion was in- 
formed that after due thought and proper inquiry 
Pierre Devereux had decided to ask Frangois Ernest 
Renault to take the Devereux name, and become heir 
to the Devereux estates. 

Great was the young man’s elation at this un- 


Pictures and Pauses. 


213 


dreamed-of proposition, but the offer was not accepted 
until he had sought Carlone and learned that the decis- 
ion of the musician in regard to the estate was un- 
changed and unchangeable, and that it was his sincere 
desire that the lad should fill the place which he had 
declined. 

And so when the apostle of happiness sometimes 
found his v/ay through the grounds where many a 
proud man’s foot had passed, and rang at the great, 
dark entrance, there came forward to welcome him the 
nineteen-year-old master — whose adopted father had 
lived only six months after the coming of the new heir 
— who, beautiful as the lilies of the field, was also like 
unto them in his unearned magnificence and his ex- 
emption from toil. 

The youthful lord of the mansion was ever delighted 
at the coming of the priest, but there always stood by 
his side a dark-faced maiden with brooding eyes, whose 
joy, if less demonstrative, was more deep. 

The boy-master had ever been the friend of Father 
Alpheus; the girl-mistress had been his companion. 

Occasionally to the dim old place which he had re- 
fused to make his own, Carlone came, bringing with 
him his violin, and making divine melody in the rooms 
where the lonely Italian girl had drawn the bow across 
its strings, and where her son by his despised strains 
had brought upon himself the ire and condemnation of 
his father. 

‘T am glad the place is yours,” the musician would 
say to the lad who ruled his stately household with as 
much ease and grace as though all his days had been 


214 


A Grain of Madness. 


passed in lordly halls. ‘'I love to come to it as your 
home; as my own it would oppress me terribly.” 

Once, when the beauty of spring was over every- 
thing, Leolin and Carlone had together visited the 
chateau. 

The artist had moved through the long halls and 
spacious rooms, her straight white robes clinging about 
her, a gracious presence, crowned with her own noble- 
ness, wearing her womanliness as an empress would 
wear her diadem; and the musician, walking by her 
side in a dream of silent joy, seeing in her something 
so different from other women, remembered the lily 
among common flowers, and thought, as he had 
thought so many times before, of Dante and Petrarca, 
understanding anew the worship which had enslaved 
them with noble captivity. 


Days of Disaster. 


215 


XXVII. 

DAYS OF DISASTER. 


There is rust upon locks and hinges, 

And mold and blight on the walls, 

And silence faints in the chambers. 

And darkness waits in the halls. 

— Louise Chandler Moulton. 

Carlone was playing in Rome; playing every night 
to the strangest audience that ever set itself down to 
listen. 

The usual number gathered was not a large one, 
though to hear this master hundreds came where a 
lesser musician could not have summoned scores. Car- 
lone never lacked hearers, but the face of every listener 
was pale, and there was on every countenance an ex- 
pression of alert anxiety. When the sound of swing- 
ing doors was heard, and a messenger entered to sum- 
mon one of their number, each one held himself in 
readiness to be singled out for departure. 

Rome was ravaged by fever, spent by pestilence. All 
over the land for weeks the heat had been intense and 
unbroken. The sun had seemed like a pitiless demon, 
and the wind come laden with death from the marshes 
miles away. In those portions of the city where cellars 
swarm with human beings the whole year round, the 


2i6 


A Grain of Madness. 


miasma had lain hold of its victims by scores. As the 
heat increased, and fear added its power to disease, 
scores became hundreds, and not in the haunts of pov- 
erty alone, but among the comfortably housed, the 
cleanly middle classes, and all who for any reason re- 
mained in Rome, the fever spread itself with entire im- 
partiality. Hundreds fled from the suffering city, but 
those left to become victims of disease and fear were 
numbered by thousands. The seamstress was seen at 
her narrow window one day, the next there was no one 
at the casement, and the dead cart stopped for a mo- 
ment before the door of the poor house to add one 
more to its ghastly load. The pupil in the studio, 
whose slender earnings or nightly carousals had left 
him no means of flight, looked at others painting in a 
manner as mechanical as his own, and wondered if an- 
other day would find all the brushes moving, and on 
the morrow did not count those which were lain aside 
because his own was still. Sculptors dropped their 
clay or chisels, and went out from the company of their 
fellows with looks that said farewell. Laborers, taken 
from their usual tasks to toil through all the hours of 
the day at making graves, threw forth to-day the earth 
which covered them to-morrow. 

The streets were silent but for the sound of convey- 
ances for the sick and the dead. The few foot pas- 
sengers, emaciated by disease and apprehension, pale 
with watching and dread, glided along as stealthily as 
though they were already ghosts. 

Rome was under an iron rule, a hand of steel. 

Death and Fear were her despots. 


Days of Disaster. 217 

And every night Carlone was playing in this plague- 
stricken city. 

From his wanderings in cool valleys, his floatings on 
pleasant waters, he had come to this place of torture 
and of terror to give all that was his to the succor of 
Rome. 

The poor were so very poor! There was so little 
wherewith to obtain things needed for meeting this ter- 
rible crisis. To the few who remained in Rome, and 
who could spend money and time, an hour's music at 
evening was a welcome respite from the anxiety and 
dismal suggestions which were pressing upon them on 
every hand. It was announced on placards that all 
money taken for tickets would be devoted to the relief 
of the suffering, and many who could not linger to 
enter the hall paid for a seat, and went away to the 
dead or dying. 

''Why does he not play in other places, and send his 
money here, since he is so anxious to be of aid?" was 
the question asked by many, and the true reply was 
that the musician wished to give himself as well as his 
gold. Money was sorely needed; help was needed 
more sorely still. The city had been deserted by near- 
ly all who might have been of assistance. To linger 
was almost sure death, and few were brave enough to 
stay. While the authorities asked for money they 
begged for help. 

And so from his wanderings of gain and of pleasure 
the musician came to sell his talent and give his time 
to Rome. 

All his time, with the exception of that evening hour 


2i8 


A Grain of Madness. 


with his violin and the few hours spent in taking the 
rest and food without which he must inevitably have 
succumbed, was given to the sick. The old mansion in 
its tangled garden of trees and its walks over which the 
roses leaned, was the scene of his ministrations. From 
foul dens swarming with human life, running over with 
filth, where no breath of unbreathed or untainted air 
could be obtained, the stricken ones were brought to 
the spaciousness and comfort of the home of Leolin, 
from which they were borne forth convalescent or for 
burial. The servants of the house had fled, and among 
the suffering and the dead the artist and the violinist 
moved alone. 

In that part of the city where disease was doing its 
most devastating work, there labored day and night 
two men of whom it was whispered that they did the 
work of twenty and bore fatigue as mortals never did 
before. 

They were very unlike, the one with tall figure and 
pale features, whose keen hazel eyes could grow very 
soft, and who laid his pitying touch on the burning 
brow of sufferers with deft, thin fingers; the other a 
giant in frame, with straggling, tawny hair and a tan- 
gle of red beard ; a man whose grasp upon feeble hands 
somehow gave a feeling of protection and strength, and 
by its potency many times aroused those who were be- 
ing slain by fear alone. 

These four, the two in the home of Leolin, the two 
in the city's direful confusion of death and desolation, 
seemed to bear charmed lives. No burdens appalled 
them, no fears assailed them. Throwing themselves 


219 


Days of Disaster. 

down only for a few hours of the twenty-four, eating 
hastily, working each with the zest and zeal of ten, 
fainting not, failing never, they remained alert, effi- 
cient, undaunted. 

It was the fifth week of the plague. The death-rate 
had materially lessened, and fewer whom the fever as- 
sailed were slain. The heat had abated, hope was dis- 
placing fear. The city began to set its affairs in order. 

The studios of the two artists were not yet reopened, 
but thfeir owners were only occasionally busy with their 
grueiome tasks. • 

Nightly Carlone played on, each night his audience 
growing larger. In former times people had gone 
almost mad at the strains he invoked, but during this 
time of trial it seemed to those who listened that the 
very gates of heaven must be ajar and sounds of angel- 
musicians floating down. He had instructed the men 
at the doors to allow the poor to fill all places left va- 
cant by those whose money secured entrance, and when 
the news of this bidding had spread abroad there was 
left no standing-room in the hall, and around the doors 
great crowds congregated to listen to the faint notes of 
the wonderful violin. Ofttimes in the latter weeks, 
when the sick did not so constantly require his atten- 
tion, after the hour's concert in the hall the musician 
would go out among the gathered company and play as 
long and as skilfully as he had played for those whose 
gold he had gained. 

‘'A man with a violin ?" had wondered a girl on New 
England waters, and in that city across the sea people 
looked in each other’s faces with the same thought. 


220 


A Grain of Madness. 


A man with a violin ? A god rather, with an instru- 
ment touched and tuned by hands immortal. 

It was evening. 

He had come out among them after his usual hour 
inside, worn and pale, but playing as they had never 
heard even him play before. It was as though he read 
and voiced every emotion of their hearts. Pain for 
their dead was in his harmony, prayer for the lives 
for which they agonized in his strains. Hope breathed 
its consolation, resignation sent its low voice forth. 
Now sad as the song of summer night-birds, now soft 
as the lullaby beside baby couches, now piercingly 
sweet as the tones of the nightingale, now triumphant 
as the bugle’s note, the wonderful improvisation went 
on. 

A man with a violin? A god rather, with an in- 
strument touched and tuned by hands immortal. 

So the people thought. 

Suddenly the violin slid from the musician’s shoul- 
der, his hand, still grasping the bow, went up to his 
forehead, and his dark eyes, full of an expression of 
pain, were raised to the faces of those about him. 

They knew the signs too well. Far too familiar 
were his movements and his looks. 

*'He has the fever,” they say pityingly. 

‘'Take me home,” were his words, as he held out a 
card on which were written his own name and the 
name of the home of Leolin ; a card which he has car- 
ried through all those weeks of horror for a possible 
emergency like this. 

To him, as to the priest, that place of sheltering 


221 


Days of Disaster. 

greenness, where the roses bloomed so thickly, and 
through whose garden-ways a white-clad woman came 
to give him welcome, was home. 

A carriage was standing at the door. Its owner as- 
sisted him to enter it, and the driver was given the di- 
rections on the card. 

Moonlight has succeeded sunset, and lies in a mellow 
flood on the floor of the room where the artist sits be- 
side her friend. Before the nightingale shall have 
given place to the lark the fever will have claimed its 
most conspicuous victim, and Carlone will have given 
his life as a thank-offering for the fair things of his 
existence. 

They both know that death is near. 

“Is there anything you would say, aught that you 
would ask?’’ are the words of Leolin, as she holds his 
hot hand in both her own. 

“Dear Love,” the answer comes, “it cannot matter 
now if I say that which has long been in my heart. 
I have loved you since those first days when we floated 
together in the little boat at home. I used to think be- 
fore I realized that you were so far removed by your 
genius from other women, that should I ever win a 
name worthy to become yours that I would try to woo 
you as my wife, but when I saw you as you are, fitted 
for the winning of immortal fame, the wearing of eter- 
nal honors, I loved you well enough to forbid myself 
to speak of love, and to be your friend. But now may 
I ask. Dear, that if marriage had been for you, might I 
as well as another, have hoped to be your husband ?” 


222 A Grain of Madness. 

“Better, far better, friend of mine,” was the low 
reply. 

She stooped and kissed him on the lips. 

‘‘Father Alpheus? Has he come home? Is he 
safe?’’ asked the musician when the dawn had begun 
to redden the east. 

“He has come home, he is safe,” was the artist’s re- 
ply to the half-delirious question. 

She did not tell him that in another chamber the 
priest was safe in the safety of death. 

In the early morning of the previous day, after Car- 
lone had gone forth. Father Alpheus had come home 
and lain down like one who had succumbed to dis- 
ease than as one whose earthly work is done, and who 
goes readily forth to meet new work in a new world. 

“You still see the Christ? You will paint the pic- 
ture ?” 

These were the priest’s dying words. 

“Ah, yes,” his daughter had answered, “I see Him 
still. I shall surely paint the picture.” 

In his wasted hand he tightly held the stems of some 
withered flowers, and all about him was the pervasive, 
penetrating odor which was to him the perfume of love 
and of power. 


Fine Issues. 


223 


XXVIII. 

FINE ISSUES. 

Spirits are not finely touched 
But to fine issues. — Shakespeare. 

''A just judgment, a wise decision. I thank you.^’ 

Had he hoped his fetters would be removed? Had 
he feared his sheltering bands would be broken? Of 
what had he dreamed, of what been afraid, during the 
night hours when no sleep would come, and his mind 
had been busy with one thing ? 

Leolin had been ten years in Rome. Ten years had 
she been true in every fiber of her being, every beat of 
her heart to that vow made in the New England forest. 
Too true? Ah, Heaven, was he untrue that he could 
almost wish that she had been less faithful ? 

‘‘A just judgment, a wise decision. I thank you.” 

The voice of the artist was a little unnatural, some- 
what hoarse. 

Two men who were acknowledged the best judges 
of painting in Rome, had stood long before the two 
pictures of which Vancourt had asked, nay, demanded, 
an honest opinion as to which was the better. 

Ten years. 

On one condition was his pupil free to wed; not 


224 


A Grain of Madness. 


an easy condition, but could not he, with his latest pro- 
duction before him, deem it one possible to be met? 

This had been his thought as he had put by his brush 
on the last day of the thousands which had gone to 
make up those ten years. 

On that afternoon his pupil had sent him as a thank- 
offering and a memorial gift, her own latest picture, 
which she had never shown him in process. 

'T will be just, I will be just.’’ 

He had repeated the words many times during the 
stillness of that last night. 

Side by side in his studio the two newly finished pic- 
tures hung. He placed them in his exhibition room, 
and the multitudes who poured in to examine them 
pronounced them the most wonderful paintings which 
had been seen in Rome since an old master touched 
brush to canvas. 

Vancourt’s is the larger canvas, and before it the 
beholder is held silent by wonder, thrilled by awe, para- 
lyzed by something akin to terror. 

He sees the dead Christ as the artist saw him. The 
blinding horror of the scene pierces him like a knife- 
thrust as it grows for him to its full meaning. The 
blackness of inky night hovers close around the rude 
cross on which hangs the lonely figure. The agony of 
death is fixed in the Divine Face around which is blow- 
ing the wild, flowing hair. The awfulness of the deed 
rushes with crushing force upon the gazer. He is 
numb with the terribleness of the tragedy. He cannot 
weep or think ; he can only stand, fixed as a statue, and 
realize. Absolutely true is the drawing, masterly the 


Fine Issues. 


225 


shading, exquisite every detail, but the mind takes no 
note of line or color or texture; the conception is all- 
absorbing. 

But what is this Vision to which the beholder lifts 
eyes still filled with that palpitating horror? The 
murky darkness is followed by undulating vapors of 
soft, caressing grayness and glimpses of blue. There 
was gloom ; here is glory. There was torture ; here is 
triumph. There was the many-spiked circlet of thorns ; 
here is the crown of melting, myriad-hued stars. There 
was prostration ; here is power. There was brutality ; 
here is beauty. Vanquishment is replaced by victory. 
Horror has been exchanged for harmony. There was 
the emptiness of death ; here is fulness of life. 

Who is this Incarnation of Radiance, this Expression 
of Might, this Embodiment of Tenderness? 

Here is unwavering strength of execution, faultless 
symmetry, wondrous grace, marvelous coloring, but to 
these the beholder gives no thought; he simply feels. 
He is drowned in emotion, submerged in sensation. He 
looks into the searching eyes with the smile of God 
within them, and thrills as their gaze answers his own. 
The tenderly masterful lips seem about to open in 
speech. 

Who is this Wondrous Being? 

Every nerve answers to a thought like unto that 
which had come to a watcher in pallid land and to. the 
girl-artist in her studio ; which comes slowly, but with 
entire conviction. With hushed tones and reverent ac- 
cent are uttered the words : 


226 


A Grain of Madness. 


is the Lord. Not the Crucified but the Risen 
Christ. It is the King of Glory f' 

Ten years. 

On one condition was his pupil free to wed. Could 
he meet that condition? 

This was his thought through the days when mul- 
titudes thronged to look upon the two pictures. 

Only to one who was a greater artist than herself 
was she to give her hand in marriage. Should he who 
framed the vow be the first to ask her to break it ? 

He loved her. There was no evading the knowledge, 
no crowding out of his craving for her by devotion to 
toil, by consecration to his ideal. With all the force of 
his fiery soul he loved her. ' 

And her latest painting was greater than his own. 

Was it greater? He had so decided the first hour 
it had hung in his studio, but in the long, sleepless 
night-hours he had told himself that perhaps his fear- 
ful heart underestimated his own work, overestimated 
hers. And again, according to the agreement in the 
Maine forest, judgment was to be rendered by more 
than one competent critic. 

He would be just — to her and to himself. 

And so the judges were summoned, and after a de- 
liberate, critical examination of every detail of the two 
pictures, the spokesman had pronounced the opinion 
of the two. 

‘'Entirely admirable as are both paintings, we must, 
in view of its unique conception and unusual handling 
combined with the perfect finish of every minutest part, 
give to this our preference.’’ 


Fine Issues. 


227 


The artist, rigid yet trembling, had turned to see 
the hand of the judge resting — upon the painting of 
his pupil. 

He had pronounced the judgment just, the decision 
wise, and with thanks, courteous if cold, had dis- 
missed the critics. 

‘^Are you content 

Vancourt asked the question two days after the de- 
cision of the judges. 

‘'Content T' said Leolin, a little wonderingly. 'T am 
more than content ; I am happy.^' 

"Do you never think of — marriage ?” he asked, look- 
ing away from her. 

"Marriage! Why think of that?’’ was the reply. 
"My life is full. Your brave teaching was also wise. 
Who shall worthily serve two masters? And then,” 
half playfully, "whom should I marry? Where is he 
whose best, according to the kind decision of one whom 
I accept as my judge, is better than my own? Men 
call you the greatest painter of your day. If indeed my 
picture is superior to yours, from whence can I look 
for my lord ?” 

A swift, glad light stole into the face of the mas- 
ter. She was true; he had helped to make her so. 
And she would not go away in the coming time. Art 
was her mistress, and he surely might be, if not her 
husband, more to her than any other man. A feeling 
of relief, of certainty, came to him. For the first time 
in years he was content. 

"We have been master and pupil,” he said, and 


228 


A Grain of Madness. 


surely no one ever before heard so wistful a note in 
the tones of the stern, silent painter. ''Shall we not 
be friends, with all the strength of constancy, all the 
reliance of trusted honor, all the rest of perfect sympa- 
thy, in our friendship ? I never had a real friend in 
my life.’^ 

"Have one at last,’’ she cried. "I, too, am friend- 
less now. You are good to want me, and, believe me, 
I am not ungrateful, or unmindful of the honor you 
do me. I will prove it, indeed I will prove it! Ah! 
we will be so happy through all the years — my friend !” 

"They call him the Painter of Power,” said a trav- 
eler who in one of Rome’s galleries had lingered long 
before one of the greatest of modern masterpieces. 
"Surely the name is well chosen.” 

"Well chosen, indeed,” replied the speaker’s com- 
panion. "But look you here. May two souls, think 
you, reappear in one body? Raphael, the Master of 
Color and of Tenderness, and Del Sarto, the "Fault- 
less Painter,” seem united here.” 

For many minutes he had been gazing at the star- 
crowned Christ. 































